


A Very Good Place to Start

by halotolerant



Series: Musicals [1]
Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Anal Fingering, Blow Jobs, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, First Time, Frottage, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Tourism, Undercover as Married, Undercover as a Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-09 14:38:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3253451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halotolerant/pseuds/halotolerant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martin bit his lip, and couldn’t hold back his smile. “I know what you mean, I do. I just don’t… This doesn’t exactly happen to me often. I don’t know the protocol.”</p><p>“Believe it or not, Martin, there isn’t actually an SOP – updated or otherwise – for getting stuck in a foreign country due to a volcanic ash cloud, having to impersonate a married couple with your fellow pilot and then accidentally snogging them whilst watching Julie Andrews play the guitar.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Very Good Place to Start

**Author's Note:**

> **Additional Warnings Notes** : A character in this story with a canonical history of issues with alcohol (Douglas) discusses, briefly, the stresses which lead to him misusing alcohol and the decision to later become abstinent from it. Additionally, another character fears that new stresses may have caused Douglas to relapse into drinking, but this turns out not to be the case. 
> 
> This story also has mention of issues with acceptance of sexuality, and brief references to homophobic individuals and homophobic language.
> 
>  **Notes** : Many thanks to my wonderful beta, **elfwhistletree** , who assists me in my ongoing battle with the common comma and much more besides ♥ 
> 
> After the volcanic ash cloud that halted pan-European air travel in 2011, new regulations were introduced to try and determine at what particle density aircraft could still fly safely, and so far this has prevented another similar incident - I've just gone ahead and assumed that somehow another one could happen all the same *g*

\- - -

**One**

\- - -

 

Funny how there could be a path in life that would tie you down and set you free at the same time.

 

Because no matter how badly the day might have dawned, no matter what crap he’d left behind him in his cramped damp attic bedsit in Fitton, Martin had found himself a job that solved nothing, and yet allowed him to quite literally fly away from it all.

 

And now, with G-ERTI at cruising altitude and the clouds making a floor of fluff beneath them, the messy old planet full of day-to-day problems was blocked out entirely as they went speeding on through clear blue sky. Apart from a distant incoming Boeing 777, the world was empty and sparkling, clean and peaceful and perfect. It had always been one of Martin’s favourite things about flying, this blessed solitude.

 

“And that makes twenty-seven.”

 

Solitude, that was, relatively speaking. Martin, deep in his reverie, had startled at the interruption and now he scowled.

 

“No! What? It can’t be? Douglas! I’m sure I wasn’t!”

 

“And I’m very sure you were. Should there be any doubt, we could of course refer to the Cabin Voice Recorder. I’m tempted to offer you a bet on it, but that would be, I think, unfair. I am, after all, very, very sure.”

 

Martin was horribly aware that he was pouting. But awareness of one’s amusingly inappropriate level of irritation did nothing to make one less irritated. “Oh, ‘refer to the Cabin Voice Recorder’ you say casually, Douglas, but it’s not just like rewinding a tape, you know.”

 

“I’m not sure I would know, actually.” Douglas gave a languid sigh. The man was obnoxiously adept, Martin had often thought, at putting a wealth of superiority into a sigh. “Living in the twenty-first century as I do, I haven’t rewound a tape in nearly twenty years and the memory of the process, thrilling though it is, starts to fade.”

 

“Don’t try and pass off your senile decay as technological superiority. Now if your fading recollection will stretch far enough, which one was I humming – correction, _allegedly_ humming – this time?”

 

Douglas narrowed his eyes. “The one with the strudel.”

 

“Oh, you mean ‘ _My Favourite Things’_? Well, I suppose… I was thinking…”

 

“Twenty-eight. You might as well get to the round thirty quid now, spare us both the fiddling with small change.”

 

“What? That’s not… I wasn’t singing at all that time!”

 

Douglas raised his eyebrow. “It’s scarcely my fault if they name the things using the lyrics. It _is_ a lyric in one of the songs, and you did say it aloud. The line where ‘real’ singing leaves behind its lesser brethren in vocalisations is for others than I to draw. And the terms of the bet were that you couldn’t make it all the way to Salzburg without singing any of the songs from the musical most famously associated with that city, with a penalty of one pound per infringement.”

 

Martin shook his head. “Why did I agree to this?”

 

“The same reason why you always agree to things, Martin. Your unshakeable belief that you possess the willpower to beat me at one of my own games. An eternal triumph of hope over experience.”

 

“That was a rhetorical question, Douglas.”

 

“And yet, though it did not require an answer, I gave you one anyway. I’m in a generous mood today.”

 

“Well, anyway, a pound per song reference is excessive.” Martin sighed heavily and adjusted some dials, more to look busy than anything. Within him an urge to smack Douglas round the head was warring with relief that they were doing this – that this easy bickering was filling the time, preventing any risk of deeper conversation. He didn’t want to think about real life today, just to live in the moment, right here where his existence found its peak.

 

Douglas stretched back in his chair with the self-indulgence of a cat, lifting his arms above his head for a moment. “You’re not the one stuck on a small flight deck with someone obsessed with a film that represents the nearest musical cinema has ever come to producing a variant of that white milky stuff they use to send you to sleep during anaesthetics.”

 

“I am not obsessed with _The Sound of Music_ , it’s just… very catchy, that’s all.”

 

“Twenty-nine. Nearly there.”

 

“But…! Oh, I suppose your next point is going to be that it’s not your fault they used a lyric for the title.”

 

“Ah, Martin, you know me so well.”

 

“If you’re so keen to wage this hate campaign against popular lyrical drama, couldn’t you go out into the cabin and extract some penalties from the people on this plane who are actually _dressed_ as the characters? Including one, I believe, impersonating Captain von Trapp’s whistle?”

 

“In many ways, Martin, I would love to. But frankly two impediments prevent me. Firstly, and at my urging, Arthur has loaded them all up with so much schnapps and strudel that they’ve fallen asleep and are not, in fact, currently singing. And secondly, none of them, despite being adults who go outside dressed as musical instruments and goats, were foolish enough to take a bet against me. Only you did that.”

 

Martin leant his head back against his pilot’s chair, and sighed deeply. He feared the meaning of his own sigh was all too unsubtle.

 

\- - -

 

It was a great pity, Martin reflected grimly, as he stood in the cabin watching the passengers disembark (sometimes people liked to thank their Captain, and even occasionally one got a salute), that Douglas had not drawn Arthur into his tolls-and-penalties-for-musicals system. Especially now, as Arthur finished ushering out their passengers with a cheery round of “So long! Farewell! Auf Weidersehen! Good-night-or-actually-morning-actually!”

 

The fourteen British tourists that MJN had just conveyed to their ‘Sound of Salzburg’ holiday did seem fairly pleased - or at least not actively infuriated - with Arthur’s efforts. But then if you booked yourself onto a week-long ‘360 degree Sound of Music experience’, Martin mused, patience for these sorts of jokes was probably a must-have.

 

“Well, thank God that’s over.” With the passengers safely offloaded, Douglas had now emerged from the flight deck, hat tucked under one arm, surveying the abandoned seats as one might a pen after feeding time at the zoo. “Right. I think it’s about time for lunch. Refuel ourselves, refuel G-ERTI and then let’s get the hell out of Dodge.”

 

“Actually we’re in Salzburg, Douglas,” Arthur pointed out with a smile.

 

Douglas turned to him. “Thank you, Arthur. Your observational skills are unrivalled. Luncheon?”

 

“Ooh, maybe just a small sandwich or something. I’m getting ready for my party tomorrow. I want to be nice and hungry for all my free food.”

 

“Free?” Martin asked.

 

Arthur grinned. “Yes, Burger King has a special thing where they’ll let you eat for free if you’re the birthday boy.”

 

“But doesn’t your mother technically pay for all of your…”

 

“Now, Martin,” Douglas caught him quickly by the arm, giving him a little shake before continuing. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want Arthur to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

 

“Oh it’s not horsemeat any more,” Arthur said, in a tone clearly intended to be reassuring. “The government fixed that, didn’t they?”

 

Martin took a deep breath. It was not Arthur’s fault that Arthur’s mother could support him and that Arthur didn’t mind her doing that. It was not Arthur’s fault that Arthur was perfectly contented with his life. It was not Arthur’s fault that he had probably never tried or failed to pay a bill in his life.

 

“I’m sure your thirtieth birthday party will be great, Arthur. I’m looking forward to it. The Burger King _and_ the crazy golf. Sounds, um, brilliant.”

 

“Oh it will be brilliant!” Arthur agreed. “I just hope Mum doesn’t mind helping with the name tags. I’m going to get a very sore hand writing them all out tonight otherwise.”

 

Martin shot a glance at Douglas, who looked equally bewildered. “Are you going to need such a lot of name tags?” Martin asked. “I didn’t realize it was more than us lot at MJN.”

 

“Well, let’s see, er… oh dear - maths!” Arthur grimaced and then began counting on his fingers. “There’s the people in our street, and from the library, and the market, and the ones from my primary school, and secondary school, and the learning-about-people course in Ipswich, and…”

 

“Rough estimate?” Douglas chipped in.

 

Arthur contorted his expression into one suggestive of supreme effort. “Um, seventy-ish?”

 

Martin blinked. “And they can all come?”

 

“No, sadly. That’s the ones that have said they can, about half couldn’t.”

 

Martin’s mouth fell open. “You had _one hundred and forty people_ to invite to your party? One hundred and forty? I’m not sure I’ve ever even spoken to… Even if I _died_ I’m not sure I’d get more than…”

 

“Martin?” Douglas had taken him by the arm and was leading him gently but firmly towards the plane door, pointing out something in the view. “Did you know that as well as being the location for the Film That Shall Not Be Named, Salzburg contains an aeronautical museum? Attached to the airport no less?”

 

“Really?” Martin squinted at the terminal building, taking in the vista of snow-capped mountains beyond. He straightened his jacket in preparation for stepping out onto the tarmac. (A professional person is always professionally presented.) “Aeronautical? Here?”

 

Douglas grinned the grin of the man who knows he knows all. It was one of Douglas’ more annoying grins, in the general way of things, but Martin had grudgingly to admit that serene omniscience could have its uses.

 

That, really, was the most irksome thing about Douglas (apart from him having caused Martin to look up all the synonyms for ‘irritating’ one time in a library thesaurus); he knew who he was, was how he was, and he was really rather good at it, in all his silver-tinted nonchalance.

 

In his way, Douglas was every bit as comfortable in his skin as Arthur.

 

Which must be nice, Martin thought.  

 

“Yes indeed,” Douglas was saying. “One of the chaps who owns that Red Bull drink keeps his little collection of historic aircraft and racing cars here, in a place that looks like a sort of squashed glass doughnut.”

 

Martin thought he could spot the building, hugging the side of the more traditionally ugly mid-modern terminal. “What sort of historic aircraft?”

 

“Well, as I recall there’s a Fairchild PT-19 and a Lockheed P-38, and of course there’s my personal favourite, a Douglas DC-6.” Douglas’ face was increasingly covered in a new flavour of grin, the _Martin-is-amusing-me_ grin, the presence of which suggested that Martin’s growing glee was all too visible. But Martin refused to be embarrassed by his own enthusiasm for planes in front of another pilot. Or at least, he refused to waste any more time thinking about being embarrassed. Or at least… well, Douglas could just lump it, frankly.

 

“Well, come on, let’s go then!” Martin said determinedly, chin held high, in what he hoped was his most imposing ‘leadership’ voice. “Quick, quick, before they finish putting the fuel in!”

 

\- - -

 

Two and a half hours later, having seen every nook and cranny of Red Bull Hangar-7, Martin sat happily in Salzburg Airport’s branch of Starbucks, enjoying a Danish pastry, an Americano coffee and the remains of a Cornish pasty. Such, Douglas had remarked wryly, were the benefits of globalization.

 

Douglas was reading some sort of free airport magazine, whilst Arthur was enjoying a small plastic toy aeroplane set he’d bought at the Hangar-7 shop. Martin would honestly have liked to buy one too, but he’d been conscious of Douglas watching him as he browsed, and even though the man had wandered off well before Martin and Arthur had finished making their purchasing decisions, Martin hadn’t been sure he wouldn’t suddenly return to pounce and mock, and had left empty-handed.

 

That was just as well, really. Martin was all too aware that he had absolutely no money to play with; it had come crashing down into his consciousness every day on waking for a week. His van had recently had to undergo the equivalent of major bypass surgery, and as he’d minimized his insurance cover to keep the premiums down it had turned out that he was liable to pay for most of the repairs, with just enough taken up by the insurance to lose his no-claims bonus.

 

The stack of paperwork - of bills and calculations and pitifully few removals cheques - was one of the things lurking back in Fitton that somehow seem to reach out a long, cold claw to him wherever he went, even across oceans and continents.

 

It was the stress of it that had made him snap out a curt rejection when Douglas had suggested buying them all lunch. The prestige restaurant in Hangar-7 had turned out to be called _Ikarus_ , and Douglas, tickled pink, had suggested the meal in honour of Martin’s very own Icarus Removals. And of course Douglas had been teasing, had been intending to wind him up, but he couldn’t have known it was quite such a sore point just now, and Martin wished he’d not been so abrupt.

 

Wished he’d taken up the offer of food too. A free meal would have been some sort of sop to his finances, even if too little too late. He ought to have thought of that. Perhaps tomorrow he could try to convince the good people of Burger King that it was his birthday too? That he was Arthur’s very un-identical, somewhat older twin?

 

A female voice from the airport tannoy cut across his thoughts. The first announcement was in German, which Martin couldn’t follow beyond the odd word, but he was aware of the startled response of those around him.

 

“What?” Martin began, turning to Douglas, but then the announcement came again in English, rising above the hum of chatter the first announcement had already occasioned.

 

_Ladies and Gentlemen, your attention please: Salzburg Airport regrets to announce that in the last three hours the recent volcanic activity in Iceland has resulted in the formation of a large ash cloud across European airspace._

_This cloud has been ascertained to be in breach of the maximum particle density safety limit. As a result the European Aviation Safety Agency and the Austrian Civil Aviation Authority have had no other option but to close Austrian airspace, and have cancelled all flights for at least the next twenty-four hours. Similar measures have been taken in other countries in Western Europe._

_I repeat, due to volcanic ash originating from Iceland, Austrian airspace has been closed and all flights to and from this airport have been cancelled. You are advised to seek alternative transport. Members of our team are ready at the information desks to offer their assistance in finding other means of transportation. If your journey is not urgent you are advised not to travel due to anticipated high demand. In a moment a list will be read of the currently airborne flights still due to arrive at this airport today._

 

Martin looked at Douglas. Douglas looked back at him, an expression of pure horror on his face.

 

“But I’ve got to pick up my van this afternoon!” Martin pointed out.

 

“Stuck here?” Douglas said at the same time. “In bloody lederhosen-land?”

 

Arthur spoke more quietly, and perhaps that was what drew both their attention to him.

 

“My party…” he said, tremulously, and bit his lip.

 

\- - -

 

“How can there be no train tickets left?” Martin asked Douglas, the booking hall and possibly the entire universe. “How?”

 

“Well, I don’t know, Martin,” Douglas replied, with perhaps even a suggestion of tetchiness invading his delivery. “It’s almost like very suddenly a large number of people had no other way to get out of Salzburg.”

 

Martin gave him a hard stare. “Why aren’t there more trains put on, then? I thought this was the land of efficiency.”

 

“No, I think that would be Switzerland or possibly Germany, although technically if one goes back to the times of the Holy Roman Emperors all those areas were contained within the borders of one administrative region until at least 1806…”

 

“Douglas!” Martin snapped. He was irritated now, without question. Irritated and irked and vexed and annoyed and all the rest of them, and under that something worse, something close to very upset. He could feel the heat rising in his face, and with his complexion he never flushed becomingly or whatever Victorian heroines did – no, he came out in weird blotches like the map of Indonesia, all over his face and throat. This was the last thing he needed, and just when he’d thought things couldn’t get any worse.

 

“Douglas, there has to be…” Martin took a deep breath and swallowed. “You have to be able to come up with something.”

 

“I’m sorry, Martin,” Douglas had the grace to at least affect a sorrowful expression. And his voice had dropped to a tone a little more normal and a bit less like someone sucking plums through velvet. “But honestly the trains are full, the buses are full and even if they weren’t – I’ve been thinking about this – we couldn’t go.”  


“What? Why on Earth not?”

 

“Well, say we did manage to get one train and then another and some buses in between, and stayed in hotels or even slept on platforms, it’d still take a long time to get home. And then we’d only have to come all the way back here again to pick G-ERTI up and fly her away whenever this ruddy ash cloud moves on to pastures new. And Carolyn doesn’t have the budget to move us about when we might as well stay put, you know that.”

 

“Oh,” Martin said. He stared rather hard at whatever timetable was in front of him, at the little unfamiliar place names and the reassuring rows of numbers, like the fuel pressure tables in the flight manual.

 

“What is it, Martin? Have you got a van job?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“You’re going to have to cancel. It’s just that simple, I’m afraid.”

 

“And is that how you’re going to tell Arthur he’ll have to cancel his party?”

 

Douglas shrugged. For a moment, he looked tired and travel-worn, and not at all young. “Do you have any better suggestions?”

 

Martin took a deep breath. None of this, after all, was actually Douglas’ fault. He cleared his throat, wondering whether this was an acceptable sort of time for one chap to pat another briskly on the upper arm.

 

But he was saved from this decision by the ringing of his mobile. He scrambled for it in his pocket, and felt a wave of hope as he saw the caller ID.

 

“Yes? Carolyn? Have you managed to convince the train company that we’re VIPs?”

 

Carolyn’s reply came through the speaker so loudly that Martin was pretty sure Douglas could hear it all too.

 

“No, Martin. Not least because none of you are very important, at any rate not in the eyes of the international transport community. No, the best I can do is tell you that there is at Salzburg a cabin crew for Air Caledonia – Herc put me onto them – who had already arranged a car hire to get back from a job with a loaned aircraft, and who have, due to the illness of one of their stewardesses, one space, and one space only.”

 

“A space? But that’s brilliant! That’s…”

 

“I will leave it up to you, Martin - and Douglas and Arthur, of course - how that space is disposed of. You can draw straws or arm-wrestle for it or make the decision however you like. But I will mention this: Arthur has been planning that birthday party for three months. He has made himself a special new hat. Well, crown. Burger King, you see.”

 

Martin gripped the phone more tightly, staring into space again, feeling a horrible sinking sensation in his stomach. If he couldn’t collect the van he’d be paying for a longer time in the garage, and if he couldn’t do the job he’d still have no income stream. But then there was Arthur. Arthur, who had roof and board all paid for, Arthur who hadn’t a care in the word.

 

Arthur, who was desperately looking forward to being the birthday boy at Burger King.

 

Martin could trade in some more of his computer games for cash at the exchange on the high street, he supposed. He’d be able to buy them back eventually, or better ones, even. Maybe.

 

“Let me,” Martin heard Douglas saying, and realized the phone was being taken from his numb fingers. “Hello? Hello, Carolyn. Yes? Oh yes, we can get Arthur to the Air Caledonia people no problem. But where are Martin and I supposed to stay? We’ve been at the train station so long, the town’ll be booked solid now. Any more strings you can pull?”

 

“I can do better than that,” Martin heard Carolyn saying, tinny through the mobile speaker at a distance. “I’ve been looking through the trip paperwork. ‘Sound of Salzburg’ tours faxed all their stuff to us, you see. Now, you will recall that, despite being a sixteen-seater plane, we had only fourteen people today for the sold out tour? Well that was because of the absence of a Mr… now, let me see this. A Mr Fennington and a Mr Dashiel. They have an all-inclusive package of accommodation and food booked and paid for upfront, but had to pull out because of conflicting business obligations, or so ‘Sound of Salzburg’ tell me. Which suggests an extremely simple idea.”

 

Martin froze. “No!” he called out at the phone. “We can’t!”

 

“Way ahead of you, Carolyn,” Douglas was saying, even as Martin tried desperately to get at the phone and express his disagreement with anything approaching identity theft. “We’ll need documents, though, booking references and so on.”

 

“I’ll email them to the Air Caledonia team,” Martin heard Carolyn say breezily. “They can print them out in their office – oh, how blessed, to have a local office – and then give them to you when you drop off Arthur.”

 

“But we’ve not even decided yet that it’ll be…” Martin stopped, seeing Douglas’ expression. “OK, fine, it’ll be Arthur who gets the lift back to England. But that doesn’t mean we have to start committing fraud.”

 

“Martin,” Douglas said, turning the phone off and handing it back to him. “Where’s the harm in it? You heard her, this is all already paid for, and Messrs Fennington and Dashiel lose their money either way. And what does the hotel care who stays there? And the alternative is spending all night finding a hotel we can bribe to kick some guests out of and let us into because, let me tell you, at this point that’s the only other way we’re getting a room in this town.”

 

“But…” Martin tried and then stopped. Even if it wasn’t now more imperative than ever for him to save money, he wasn’t sure he could find a counter-argument. His skin might crawl with discomfort at lying, but Douglas had a point - this wasn’t going to do anyone any extra damage.

 

“Yes. No ifs, ands or buts. It’s settled.” Douglas told him firmly. “Now, let’s go and get Arthur away from the arcade games and put him in this Caledonian car, and then make full speed to our nice, free hotel.”

 

“It won’t be that simple,” Martin muttered darkly, following in Douglas’ wake. “It’s never that simple.”

 

\- - -

 

“Oh God,” Douglas said.

 

“Well,” Martin reminded him, “they were booked onto a ‘Sound of Salzburg’ experience, if you recall?”

 

“Oh God in heaven,” Douglas said.

 

They were standing outside the Hotel Musicale, which was conveniently situated just over the river from the picturesque Altstadt area of Salzburg, of which it probably had incredible views. All Douglas and Martin were looking at, however, was the façade of the building in front of them.

 

“It’s a mural of the bloody film poster,” Douglas pointed out. “How did they get permission to do that?”

 

“I think it’s a banner hung over the front rather than a mural, actually - can you see the seam there…?” Martin pointed out, before catching sight of Douglas’ expression. “Well, look, as you so very neatly put it, we’re not going to be able to stay anywhere else in this town tonight, so we might as well make the best of it.”

 

“I’m leaving the light off in my room when I go in,” Douglas said darkly. “I don’t even want to find out what sort of berserker-nun-child-mountain combo I’ll have watching me as I sleep.”

 

At the hotel’s reception desk, they were met by a broadly smiling middle-aged woman, who reached under the counter to bring out a key at once.

 

“Ah! Herr Fennington, Herr Dashiel!” she said, before they’d even spoken or shown their freshly printed documents, and with every appearance of delight. “It is so wonderful that you are here, yes? So many people they have come in today wanting the room, but I tell them I must wait for you for the whole day, until the very last minute. I could not allow myself to deprive a couple of their honeymoon!”

 

“Oh God,” Martin said.

 

~

 

\- - -

**Two**

\- - -

 

“I can’t believe we’ve got an indefinite sentence in a Sound of Misery hotel,” Douglas snorted, once the bedroom door was closed behind them.

 

“Really, that’s what’s bothering you? The theme? Not having to share a room, and… and a bed with me? Or them all thinking we’re…” Martin made a vague sort of hand gesture, blushing. This at least got a laugh out of Douglas, but not a very gratifying one.

 

Martin turned away and tried to take a better look around the room. It was spacious and, if he was honest, really rather nice, decorated with more taste that he’d expected, and somehow strangely familiar.

 

“As far as I’m concerned,” Douglas was saying, “we’re bloody lucky these missing passengers were a gay couple and not a straight one, or we couldn’t impersonate them. Although, I say ‘lucky’, they have stuck us in Maria’s boudoir.”

 

Yes, Martin realized, looking around. That was where the room reminded him of; Maria’s bedroom in the von Trapp household, as seen in the early parts of the film. The same white-and-gold decoration, the same iron frame and overstuffed counterpane on the double bed, the same design of wardrobe. And, of course, the distinctive green-and-white curtains. Once you got to the right angle to see it like the set appeared on screen, it was unmistakable.

 

Then he frowned. “Douglas, for someone who claims to loathe and abhor the… that film, you seem to know rather a lot about it.”

 

“How could I hate it without having seen it?” Douglas challenged. And then, as he looked around the room again. “Oh well, could be worse, I suppose. Could be a cemetery full of Nazis. Or that bloody gazebo.”

 

“Yes, I suppose we’re stuck with it now, for… for better or worse!” Martin joked, and heard himself giggling somewhat hysterically.

 

“Ouch,” Douglas said. “That was atrocious. Right, enough talking, time for a rest.” He went across the room to one of the armchairs - the one near the mini-bar and small refreshment station placed on a low table - and started preparing himself a glass of juice.

 

Martin stayed standing, arms folded, stroking his hands against his sides to try and chase away the chill of intense anxiety. No one would ever find out about all this, he reassured himself. No one but the Austrian hotel staff, who he’d probably never meet again, and Douglas, who might bring it up but would have to tell it as a joke against himself at the same time, and so would probably keep silent, at least in front of the people who’d be worst about it. Like the Fitton engineers…

 

He was surprised, actually, by how untroubled Douglas seemed by their situation. But then presumably he’d figured out that Martin wasn’t about to go crowing their accidentally homoerotic exploits around town either. Pilots, especially of Douglas’ generation, tended in Martin’s experience to be more than a little spectacularly homophobic.

 

In their cockpit conversation, Martin hadn’t heard Douglas ever speak that way – his humour was too sophisticated for name-calling, really. But then the subject had never come up, in seriousness or satire. Sometimes, when Douglas was quizzing him about his love life, and Martin was answering as carefully as walking through hot coals, talking about ‘people’ and ‘person’ and ‘they’ so precisely, he could feel bursts of crazed bravery in which he wished that Douglas would just cotton on and _ask_ him, and get it over with.

 

But he’d heard Douglas, during that brief period of the ‘Flap and Throttle’ when their social lives had intersected – well, when Martin had briefly had a social life, courtesy of Douglas – telling jokes with the engineers and the firemen. Nothing specifically hateful, nothing crude or obvious, but the little asides, the nick-names, the cries of ‘poofter’ at people who couldn’t finish a pint in under a minute; all the tiny minutiae of exclusion that reminded Martin why he was different, and why he feared discovery.

 

So Douglas could be calm about room-sharing, about passing as queer, but Martin knew that Douglas’ comfort in his skin – unlike Arthur’s – depended on how that skin looked to other people. Douglas would be calm because he didn’t think Martin would tell this story either, or that he’d let Douglas put whatever comic defensive spin on it he wanted.

 

But then that was what Martin wanted. And so it would be fine. Neither he nor Douglas would want this story to get out, so it wouldn’t. That was all.

 

And there were other things he had to deal with now, rather than waste time indulging his anxieties.

 

Gritting his teeth, Martin made the necessary phone calls to Fitton, cancelling both his job and the van pick-up. His customer sounded irate, the garage owner very pleased – at least someone was winning out from the stupid volcano. Martin snapped his mobile shut and resisted the urge to throw it at something.

 

Douglas was still sitting in one of the two wide-backed armchairs, his jacket over his face, ostentatiously protecting himself from the room’s décor as he napped. Douglas never actually admitted to having or needing naps, but Martin had been around him long enough to know he rarely functioned well in the afternoon or evening without one.

 

Sinking carefully into the other chair, Martin sighed and toed his shoes off. He got up, placed them neatly by the door, and then went over to the drinks tray. He got himself some orange juice and sat down again, loosening his tie and casting a glance out of the French windows and towards the old town on the other side of the river. The evening light caught splendidly against the mountain snow in the distance, and for a moment the place looked otherworldly and ancient.

 

If one had to have problems, Martin supposed, it was something to be able to have them in beautiful places.

 

Closing his own eyes – it had been a long, stressful day – he found himself thinking of the opening sequences of _The Sound of Music_ ; the way the camera swooped over the mountainside. He smiled. It was such a low-key beginning to the story, and yet with that building promise in the music, slowly bringing one from rest to excitement over what was to follow.

 

And the camera soaring over the mountains – watching that film, aged six or seven, that had been his first idea of what it might be like to fly. To see the world from above, racing freely over it, gazing down at the hills and the valleys as they rippled and undulated - the song was right, there was a kind of music in the landscape, there really was.

 

Martin floated away.

 

He awoke from his doze to Douglas gently and repeatedly flicking droplets of water in his face.  His response - thick with drowsiness and composed of mostly swear words - was not the sort of elegant riposte with which he often dreamed of matching Douglas’ sallies.

 

“Get off!” Martin managed eventually to enunciate clearly, whilst also flailing all four limbs in his defence. “What the hell are you doing?”

 

Douglas produced a facial expression that seemed to convey innocence and good intention matched only by that of Florence Nightingale. “Well, you were asleep – you don’t seem to snore much, by the way, which at this moment I find highly endearing – and I didn’t want you to miss supper.”

 

“Supper?”

 

“You might say ‘dinner’ I suppose. The large meal one eats in the evening, does that ring any bells? Only, if you’ll recall, this is an inclusive, pre-paid holiday we’re scrounging here, and our pre-paid food awaits in yonder restaurant.”

 

“Shh! Not so loud! Someone will hear!” Martin looked around frantically, pushing himself up out of the chair (and the shape the chair had moulded him into), and realizing he was dry-mouthed, furry-tongued and thirsty.

 

“Here,” Douglas said, and passed him a glass. “Don’t worry, that’s not the one I had my fingers in. At least,” he added, once Martin had taken a long sip, “I don’t think so, anyway - so hard to tell with identical glasses of water.”

 

Martin choked, spluttered, swallowed and glared at him. Douglas’ smile was seraphic.

 

\- - -

 

The restaurant attached to the Hotel Musicale was not, Martin was relieved to discover, a desperately upmarket affair. Although he and Douglas had brought their usual kitbags of overnight things each, as they did on every flight just in case, neither of them generally ran to suits or dinner jackets, even when they knew in advance that they were stopping somewhere.

 

What the restaurant was, however, was thoroughly, hugely and apparently unrepentantly _Sound of Music_ themed.

 

“I can’t do it,” Douglas was muttering, looking at the menu. “I can’t bring myself to order any of these things.”

 

“If you’re waiting for the point where your cultural snobbery impresses me,” Martin told him, “you’ll be waiting a long time. Ah, yes,” he smiled at the waiter as the man came over to their table. “I’ll have the Von Trapp Wurst Special Delight and the Edelweiss Meringue, and my friend here will have Schnitzel with Noodles followed by Crisp Apple Strudel, thank you.”

 

“Thirty, and thirty-one,” Douglas murmured, behind his hands. “Oh God.”

 

“Since you’re the one who said to stay in character,” Martin hissed, “you might remember you’re supposed to be on your honeymoon. Which, ergo, you have supposedly booked because it sounds idyllic to you.”

 

It had occurred to Martin that this situation, in its way, made a perfect double bluff. After all, if you had to pretend to be something, you couldn’t – by definition – be it, could you? That – or so Douglas said – was why people always thought anyone who didn’t apparently give a toss was the captain, rather than the person trying awfully hard to get it right.

 

Martin pushed back the surge of annoyance that that line of thought produced with the recollection that, for once, all Douglas’ guile and savoir-faire was to his advantage too. Because Douglas, cool, ever-ready Douglas, was stuck in this with him, bound by the nature of their lie to help and defend him in maintaining a dignified façade.

 

“Well we’re bickering, I suppose,” Douglas said, with a sigh (this one imbued with a sense of ennui overlaying a steel-cored, British bulldog determination to See It All Through). “So it’s really much like every honeymoon I’ve ever been on.”

 

Martin blinked. He would have said that he was skilled – that he was the expert – at reading Douglas’ many tones of voice, but this statement didn’t seem to have been made in heavy irony, or with the expectation of laughter or even a sympathetic grimace. If Martin hadn’t known better he’d have suspected he’d heard a trace of something like melancholy. He tried to concoct a suitable reply – something casually cheering, off the cuff and man-of-the-world.

 

It was not quick in coming to him.

 

And, “What the hell is schnitzel, anyway?” Douglas was asking now, in more of his usual tone.

 

“Um. Breaded meat? Usually, veal, I think.”

 

“Oh. Oh well, that’s not too bad at least.”

 

At this juncture, the waiter came back to their table. He was carrying a bottle which seemed, by his insistence that they take it and his reassuring noises, to be either complimentary or pre-paid champagne. Martin looked at Douglas, expecting an easy excuse to sally forth, but none was forthcoming and after a moment he realised that Douglas was in fact waiting to see if Martin wanted it.

 

“Oh! Um, I’m fine, actually.” Martin tried to think quickly. “No, I, erm, I was diagnosed with this condition just before the um, wedding – just right before, no time to change the booking or the order, you see, er, emergency, they rang me at the church, I mean, the registry, um, place. Champagne it seems actually, er, brings me out in a rash, and…”

 

He was aware of Douglas closing his eyes for a moment, as if in pain. Then Douglas reached out and rested his hand lightly on the waiter’s arm – Douglas always seemed to know when it was OK to do that – and spoke in a low but perfectly clear voice.

 

“It looks like great stuff, old chap, but we won’t, thank you. You see, I don’t drink and my partner here has decided to keep me company. Now, if you’ve got any very sparkling, mountain-fresh mineral water, we’ll have that instead. Many thanks.”

 

When the waiter had gone, Martin knew he was still wearing the map-of-Indonesia blush. “Sorry. I didn’t think you liked to talk about… to tell people about it.”

 

“Not the people I know casually, no.” Douglas leant forward in his seat; he’d picked up a packet of sugar from the little bowl on the table and was folding and re-folding it between his fingers. “But I’m never going to see that man again, and you know about it anyway. And frankly, if I said you would be the worst liar on Earth if they sent Arthur to the Moon, you’d know what I meant.”

 

The insult was strangely reassuring. And, well, he did know Douglas more than casually at this point, though he’d never really thought of it like that. He knew more about Douglas than the engineers and the firemen and the old-boys pilots’ club, even though they were the ones Douglas drank – or rather, didn’t drink - with.

 

Martin re-adjusted the parallel lines of the cutlery at his place setting and cleared his throat.

 

“Well, um. I do think it’s great that you can, um… It must take will-power and I’ve never… I’ve got no idea, but… I think you do it very well.”

 

“Thank you Martin, your affirmation and approval is all I live for, of course.” Douglas raised his eyebrow and set the sugar down, sitting back in his chair with his arms folded. The words had been the usual laid-back languor, but the tone acid, as though there was some stronger feeling he couldn’t keep back.

 

Martin had got it wrong, then. But he couldn’t now think what could possibly be the thing to say to put it right.

 

There was a lingering, awkward silence. That was unusual. They spent so many hours side by side, chatting or arguing or just lapsing into comfortable quiet. Martin could barely remember the last time he’d struggled for a topic of conversation with Douglas.

 

The waiter presently returned, looking very pleased with himself. He had a tray with two bottles.

 

“Here we are, the water for yourselves and also here, pink lemonade. Not too sweet, not too sour…”

 

The man had such an eager, expectant expression that Martin had to answer him:

 

“…Just too pink?”

 

The waiter beamed, opened both bottles, gave them each an extra tumbler and left them to it with assurances their food would soon be with them.

 

“It’s a line from _The_ … from You Know What,” Martin said, before Douglas could form the question.

 

“Oh, I might have guessed,” Douglas said, but laughed, slightly, and Martin was glad to smile with him.

Douglas was so determined in his veto on all conversation relating to That Film that he forgot to ban aviation talk or pre-set any penalty for it and, over their main meals, Martin had soon launched himself into his story about the second runway at Philadelphia. He could see Douglas’ attention wandering, though, which he couldn’t understand, because it was a fascinating story, full of things about aeroplanes that Douglas, as a pilot, should be enjoying.

 

“And I then, of course, I, uh, ran over an elephant,” Martin concluded, giving Douglas a long look.

 

“Oh, brilliant, well done you, another triumph,” was Douglas’ rather flat response.

 

“You’re glad?”

 

“What?”

 

“That I ran over it?”

 

Douglas sighed. “Alright, you got me. No, I wasn’t listening, but all your stories end in the same way. You get it all perfectly right and demonstrate your extensive and perfect knowledge of everything, the end.”

 

Martin frowned. “No! That’s _your_ stories. I just have to…” he stopped, and looked down at his hands. “Is it so unlikely that I might have got as many things right as you? Especially given that I’m the one who’s a captain?”

 

Douglas appeared to study him for a moment. Then he leant in to pour them both some more pink lemonade. “Alright, new game plan,” Douglas said calmly. “Tell me about one of your worst balls-ups, and I’ll tell you one of mine.”

 

Martin felt his heart climb into his throat. “But I can’t talk about…”

 

“Don’t you sometimes want to talk about it?” Douglas still looked nothing like he was about to spring some sort of punchline. But then Douglas always looked like that, not least when punchlines were about to be sprung. “Want to tell someone who understands about the crap times, the bad decisions you couldn’t avoid because up there, in the air, you’ve got more power than perhaps anyone ought to have?”

 

Martin took a sip of his drink. “Well, I’d only worked for a short time before joining MJN, as you know. So you’ve really… you’ve seen pretty much all my, um, less optimal moments.”

 

“Martin.”

 

“Alright, alright – pretty much all the times when I ballsed up. And nine times out of ten it was you that saved my neck, OK? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

 

“When I was first a captain,” Douglas said now, slowly. “My first officer was brand new too, star-struck just to have a white hat on. He didn’t think I could ever be wrong, no more than God. And because I didn’t want to disappoint him, even if I sometimes wasn’t too sure of myself, I carried on anyway and acted like I had no doubts at all.

 

“On one occasion we got in such a hideous mess – barely any fuel left and the wrong approach and any number of cock-ups – that I really thought we were for it. But there was an off-duty pilot in the cabin, someone we were shuttling back to the airport for another airline, and he realised something was off and came into the flight deck – they weren’t locked, of course, in those days – and just told me to get the hell out of my seat, took the controls and landed us within an inch of our lives. And afterwards he said to my first officer, ‘They don’t employ two people to have one opinion.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”

 

Martin winced. He could imagine the situation all too easily. He had to admit he’d sometimes – well, quite often, actually – wished he had a first officer who didn’t question him, or argue back. But he wasn’t sure, on any level, how much of a good thing that would be in practice.

 

“Of course, with your flapping about, between the two of us we usually have about five opinions, so we’re alright,” Douglas added, smiling devilishly.

 

“Oh, shut up and eat your musical dessert before I sing to you about it,” Martin told him. “And you know I would.”

 

\- - -

 

“I sleep on the right side of the bed,” Douglas announced with the air of a decree. They were back in their room, and Martin was enjoying the very pleasant and rather unfamiliar sensation of being full of rich food. He could feel sleepiness tugging softly at the edges of his consciousness, and he felt warm and contented.

 

Or, at least, he had been feeling that way before Douglas reminded him of what the night was going to entail.

 

“Do you mean the, um, right side as you look at it or the right side as you lie in it?” Martin asked, wondering if the general flush of eating and drinking would disguise his reaction to the topic.

 

“As you lie in it, obviously.” Douglas walked over to said side, took off his watch and placed it on the bedside table as if staking his claim. “I think I’ll shower tonight – it’s been a long day.” He went to his overnight bag, lifting it onto the bed and unpacking what looked like some boxers and a t-shirt commemorating a Dylan Moran stand-up tour, and an expensive-looking shower bag. He shrugged off the sweater he’d worn to dinner and reached for the top buttons of his shirt before turning and raising his eyebrow at Martin. “If you don’t mind.”

 

Martin startled, and turned around at once, lurching blindly towards the television set in the corner of the room. By bringing the chair up to it he could completely turn his back on Douglas as he changed, but with the screen off – he realised in a panic – he could see the man’s reflection all too easily. He grabbed a remote and mashed at the keys.

 

_‘…Every morning you greet me, small and white, clean and bright, you look happy to meet me. Blossom of snow may you…’_

 

“Martin!” Douglas roared.

 

“Yes! No! I’m sorry, it’s just on already!” Martin pressed another button. He wasn’t sure whether this was the DVD player or the television or some sort of special hotel channel running _The Sound of Music_ in perpetuity. Eventually he did something that muted the volume, but onscreen the von Trapp children were still gathered in a circle watching their father sing about a flower.

 

There was no noise of either approval or annoyance from Douglas, just a door closing, and soon there came from the bathroom the sound of the shower running.

 

Martin relaxed back into his chair, feeling the sweat cool on the back of his neck. Oh, he’d thought himself so brave, so easy, back there in the restaurant, eating dinner with a man and joking about pretend honeymoons. With the reality before him, all the anxiety had rolled back.

 

Frankly it would have been unsettling to see this much of Douglas’ evening routine under any circumstances. He’d never seen Douglas’ nightclothes before, or seen Douglas in them. Neither had Douglas seen him. When Carolyn had in the past budgeted on rooms, one of them had always shared with Arthur. And no one could be alarmed by sharing with Arthur. At least, not if they knew what to expect, and had a fairly high tolerance for playing shadow-puppets with lamps and helping in the even distribution of socks throughout the furniture.

 

Idly, Martin let his attention return to the screen. Maria was standing behind a sofa, watching Captain von Trapp sing, a strange expression on her face as she studied him, and as he turned to look at her. Martin had never understood that bit when he was a child. Why Maria started off just seeing the Captain as another authority figure to be argued with, and then turned round and was all gooey about him and wanting to get married. He’d thought that was a bit soft of Maria, generally.

 

But the Captain had been a cipher, an obstacle to her, because she didn’t know him. And then, after they’d grown to understand each other…

 

Martin shook his head firmly, and picked up the remotes again, determined not to give up until he had another channel. Any other channel. There seemed to be about 600 options, and he scrolled mindlessly through them.

 

“Well, don’t let me interrupt you,” Douglas said from behind him. Martin looked round and then up at the TV screen and then round again, and for a moment just wanted to curl into a ball and hide. Douglas was standing in the en suite doorway, with only a towel round his waist, his hair wet, and on the screen it had somehow become… well, God knew what the program was; it looked vaguely medieval, but at that moment two mostly-naked young men were kissing each other and one was gently pushing the other to his knees, to…

 

And, by grace of heaven, the scene cut away to some people at a castle striding about in furs and shouting things. Martin tried to affect an air of nonchalance, pretending he couldn’t feel his blush. “At least they’re not singing, Douglas. Did you leave any hot water?”

 

“I would say I have no idea, but it would be more accurate to say I don’t really care.” Douglas threw some of his stuff onto his side of the bed, and went to his case. There was still water trickling down from his hair onto his torso and over his pale skin, across the scattering of hairs across his shoulder blades.

 

Martin got up and went to assemble his own things for the bathroom. He wasn’t even going to attempt to get his clothes off until he was in there. Under any and every circumstance, he really had to be in private when he undressed, otherwise he started to worry about how he looked, and ended up falling over his socks or something. During the brief relationships he’d had - the few that progressed so far as for undressing to become relevant - he’d tried to get it done in the dark or whilst the other person was out brushing their teeth or something.

 

People. Person. Even in his head, the people he’d been with didn’t have a gender. Or many other things to remember, if he was honest.

 

Having gained the privacy of the en suite, he turned the shower on. Sticking a tentative hand into the spray, he was pleased to find it properly hot. Now unobserved, he stripped efficiently and got into the shower cubicle.

 

Thank goodness for hotels. Thank goodness for the times he didn’t have to use the grotty, shared shower in the house where he lived, the one where you had to remember above all things to step out directly into your flip-flops, not onto the weird floor-covering that wasn’t a carpet, no matter how much it sort of felt like one. He’d done all he could for that shower; scrubbed and disinfected and re-grouted and de-scaled, but old, shared showers were old, shared showers and there was a patina of grot that he’d finally had to admit was never going to go away.

 

He wondered, idly, what the bathroom in Douglas’ house was like. He was pretty sure he’d picked up that Douglas had kept the house after his most recent marital breakdown, but Martin was prepared to bet that Douglas hadn’t formerly been the one keeping the place clean, not a large terrace like that. Not that Martin had ever seen inside it – if they’d kept the place all bare and minimalist, it might not take much work. Douglas, though, struck him more as a picker-up-of-unconsidered-trifles. He would be the type to have lots of books, and stacks of old magazines, and random curios with sentimental attachments.

 

Although, after three marriages, perhaps sentimental attachments weren’t so appealing?

 

Douglas had once invited him to come round for a beer. Martin hadn’t been sure how seriously he’d meant it, and with no prospect of being able to reciprocate, pride had made him demur. But it could have been interesting; he rather thought he’d accept another time.

 

Emerging from the bathroom, dried and fully dressed – or at least as fully dressed as one could be in a pair of striped pyjamas – Martin found Douglas leafing through a large binder of laminated pages, and wearing a pair of glasses which Martin had never seen before.

 

“Ah, Martin!” Douglas looked up at him over his glasses, which were elegant and square and perched on the edge of his nose in a way that had ever reason to look rather silly, and actually just made him look... well, anyway, they worked for him. “I was just studying the room service menu, thought I’d get something in the way of a snack before dropping off. Care to join me?”

 

“Really? We’ve just stuffed ourselves.” Martin put down his neatly folded pile of used clothes on his chest of drawers.

 

“Well, it’s been a long day, and I fancy a night-cap. Not, sadly, like the ones I used to enjoy, but breaking that habit doesn’t mean one has to break the habit of a nice, soothing treat just before bed.”

 

Martin shot a look at him, but Douglas’ expression seemed utterly innocent of any innuendo.

 

“Fine. I suppose if you’re eating I’ll see you and get hungry anyway. What’s on offer?”

 

Douglas grinned and held the menu up again. “Well, if I ignore everything with a name that’s a pun on a certain film, it leaves me, um, two varieties of Lipton’s Iced Tea and a selection of rice cakes.”

 

“Give that here,” Martin told him, coming to perch on the side of the bed. “Oh, wow, hot chocolate with cinnamon and extra cream. Or caramel! Or both!”

 

“Ah yes, the classic ‘Climb Ev’ry Chocolate Mountain’ beverage selection,” Douglas gave the menu another quick glance. “Well, why not? I’ll have one too. But you’re ordering.”

 

Martin rolled for his eyes and reached for the telephone. He’d have to brush his teeth again, of course, but that didn’t matter. The bathroom was feet away, not down a dark, cold staircase. And with all this free food, he could afford not to economise on toothpaste for once.

 

“Here,” Douglas said, once the order was put through. “Figure out what we’re doing tomorrow. We’ve got a Salzburg Card each courtesy of old Fennington and Dashiel so practically everything’s free.” He handed over another folder, which Martin saw was full of tourist leaflets, guides and maps. Flicking through one of the biggest and most colourful, Martin realised he’d never known Mozart was born in Salzburg. Now that little nugget could win him a pub quiz one day.

 

After a while there was a knock at the door, which Douglas gestured at him to answer.

 

“Answer it yourself, it was your idea,” Martin told him, trying to make the map on one leaflet make sense in terms of the map on another leaflet. He was starting to suspect that somebody had taken liberties with a scale.

 

“But I’m in bed,” Douglas protested mildly, and Martin perceived, to his own surprise, that this was true. Douglas was in the bed, under the covers and sitting up against some pillows, as Martin perched on the edge of the other side, reading quietly. They were actually sharing a bed – in a sense, anyway – and Martin hadn’t even noticed.

 

To conceal his expression as much as anything, Martin gave a sigh invested with as much aggrieved patience as possible and went over to open the door, smile and nod vaguely to the man with their drinks, and take them into the room. He gave Douglas one of the mugs, and then paused, hesitant, with his own. He could go and sit in a chair, but would that seem standoffish? Or he could perch on the bed again, but he wasn’t sure he’d be able to do it without awkwardness, now he’d thought about it, and in any case there would be nowhere to rest the hot chocolate.

 

“Oh get in, Martin,” Douglas told him, throwing the other half of the duvet back. “It’ll be warmer on your feet, which, if you don’t take care of them now, believe me you’ll wish you had by the time you’re my age.”

 

Martin ran through a list of excuses in his head, but nothing he could come up with seemed remotely plausible and besides, he was going to have to get in eventually.

 

Tense all over, he put his mug on the bedside table, arranged some pillows for a backrest, climbed very carefully onto the very edge of the bed, drew the covers over himself and reclaimed the drink again, cupping it in his hands. He had to admit, he did feel rather snug.

 

“So, what do you think?” Douglas was asking him.

 

Martin, wide-eyed and unsure, took a large sip of hot chocolate to delay answering a question whose meaning he wasn’t entirely certain of. However, the sip was hotter than he expected and in a panic of pain he spat some out, and then – trying to hold his hand up to is mouth to stop any more getting on the bedspread or down his front – somehow managed to poke himself in the eye.

 

“Oh, Martin,” he heard Douglas saying, but after a moment he felt the mug being taken out of his hands and a wad of tissues being proffered to him. He dabbed blindly at his face and then accepted a second, clean bundle to press against his watering eye. The spilt drink, rapidly cooling where it had got on his pyjamas, offered scant relief against the burning embarrassment rising across his skin.

 

“Why? Why do these things happen to me?” Martin tried to feel his way out of the bed, not even sure of a destination, only desperate to get out from the smothering covers, and again Douglas assisted him, slipping a hand under his elbow to guide him up and then some way along the floor. Douglas made no attempt, on this occasion, to offer generous answers to Martin’s rhetoric, which was perhaps as well – Martin might be contorted with awkwardness and half-blind, but just then he could have hit out with all the punishing force of humiliation.

 

“There,” Douglas said after a moment, and Martin heard the sound of a tap being turned on and understood that they’d come into the bathroom. “Bathe your eye again, and then you might as well shower quickly, because I don’t fancy sleeping with all that chocolate milk slowly going sour under the covers on your skin. I’ll ring for some new sheets.”

 

“What?” Martin twisted round, trying to get his eyes open against all the water swimming in them. “You can’t do that! They’ll think…”

 

Douglas’ face was a shimmering blur, but Martin thought he saw the eyebrow rising. “Well, given the hot chocolate all over the covers, and the fact that I’ll tell them that my idiot of a companion spilt hot chocolate on the covers, I think they’ll think we – not to put too fine a point on it – spilt hot chocolate on the covers.”

 

“But they think we’re a couple!”

 

“Even so. People in relationships have been known to spill beverages too, you know.”

 

Martin reached out for the sink and leant against it, trying to calm down and think rationally.

 

“Martin,” Douglas said now, in a lower voice. “This is the honeymoon suite, correct? And this hotel changes sheets daily as it is. I don’t think there’s anything we could get on the bed that would shock an experienced chambermaid, and even if there was, they wouldn’t care, and even if they did, it wouldn’t be any of their sodding business, would it?”

 

Martin chewed his lip. “No, well… I suppose not. But when you call them can you tell them… don’t tell them I poked myself in the eye, please?”

 

“Understood,” Douglas said, calmly, and closed the bathroom door.

 

Martin stripped, got back into the shower (the water was still fairly warm, thank goodness) and leant his head against the wall.

 

~

 

\- - -

**Three**

\- - -

 

“You look like you’re in a bad spy film, Martin, stop side-eyeing everyone.”

 

Martin kicked Douglas under the table. “Don’t say that! I’m trying to see if they’re looking at me.”

 

“Well, they will look at you if you look at them like you’re wondering if they’ve got the atom secrets in a briefcase. Look, I told you, no one knows or cares about our sheets.”

 

“Shut up!” Martin hissed. “I have a grapefruit fork and I will use it!”

 

“You didn’t seem this troubled last night.”  


“Well I didn’t have to see anyone last night, did I?” Martin pointed out, still whispering.

 

It hadn’t been bad, actually. He’d emerged from his second shower to find the bed once more pristine and Douglas back in it, now reading an Antony Beevor paperback, for all the world as if he’d been doing so undisturbed since the dawn of time. Martin had been able to get back into his pyjama trousers in the bathroom, since they’d remained unspotted by chocolate, but he’d been a little uneasy about crossing the room shirtless to get to his bag. With Douglas so absorbed, however, he’d felt relaxed enough to stroll fairly nonchalantly to his things and get out his spare t-shirt. Wearing it at night did of course mean wearing it again the next day, all sleep-warm, but there were no other options.

 

And it had been warm, being in bed with another person. Martin had forgotten how much difference that made. And whilst he’d started off at the edge of the mattress, paranoid that he might kick out accidentally in his sleep, he’d woken at some point soon after dawn lying comfortably on his back, near to but by no means touching a peacefully sleeping Douglas, and had drifted back to sleep himself feeling rather relaxed, fuzzy and pleased with cosy calm. He always forgot how damp the attic air was until he had a chance to sleep away from it.

 

He’d slept deeply enough that Douglas had had to come to prod him awake for breakfast, having already got up and dressed and made them both a cup of coffee. Somewhat dazedly, Martin had found himself sitting up in bed with his caffeine-fix hot in his hands before he’d even had to put a foot out from under the covers. And he could proudly state that he hadn’t spilled any coffee anywhere; he’d rather wondered if Douglas had been hoping otherwise, but decided that was an unworthy suspicion. After all, Douglas had been in a hurry to get to the buffet.

 

Once dressed, though, and having stepped outside the room, Martin had seen a maid coming along the corridor, pushing a linen trolley. Her smile and greeting to him by no means indicated that she knew more detail about him than him being a person in the corridor where she was, but he’d felt hideous doubt running through him as during the night before; that familiar fear that people were looking at him and that their reaction was laughter.

 

But, he reminded himself now, trying to focus on the bread rolls, cheese and yoghurt he’d assembled on his plate, everything was fine. No one was looking at him. No one was whispering anything about him, or sniggering or thinking up a new nickname. No one cared in the slightest.

 

He really needed – wanted – to think about something else. But his mind seemed to be stuck in a fixed loop, racing at stomach churning speeds round the most humiliating moments in his personal memory show-reel.

 

Perhaps intuiting this, or more likely just bored with the conversation thus far, Douglas put down his own knife and fork and cleared his throat. “I think we need to come up with a plan for today. I checked the BBC news on my phone this morning, and actually called Carolyn into the bargain, and it seems pretty clear that there aren’t going to be any flights for another twenty-four hours at the very least. We’ll be here another night for sure.”

 

“I wouldn’t mind exploring a bit,” Martin said, and took a bite of his roll. It was freshly baked and rather delicious, and he allowed himself a murmur of enjoyment. “There seems to be lots to see.”

 

“Now, before we go any further…” Douglas held up his hand dramatically and Martin broke into a laugh and interrupted him.

 

“No, I promise, I’m not suggesting a film location trawl for dear old ‘S of M’, I was thinking… Wait, that sounded rather, um, odd, didn’t it?”

 

Douglas’s smirk indicated he’d made the mental connection too. “ _Fifty Shades of Music: The Ultimate Crossover_?” he suggested.

 

Martin screwed up his face. “Those aren’t mental images I want, Douglas.”

 

Douglas chuckled. “Could be a good game, though. ‘Most inappropriate cultural touchstone mash-ups’?” He laughed at Martin’s reaction. “Right, so where are we going then? You’re the one who read the leaflets obsessively and in the right order.”

 

“ _Properly_ , is, I think, the word you’re looking for,” Martin told him. “Well, since we don’t know how long we’ll be here, I think we should do the really important things first. Like the big castle on the rock.”

 

“Oh, the Festung Hohensalzburg? That does sound rather good.”

 

“Can we establish right now that, even if you name places correctly and with that motorbike acceleration pronunciation till the cows come home, I’m still not going to stop and say ‘Oh, Douglas, I’m so impressed’?”

 

Douglas grinned wolfishly and leant in towards him. “Oh, but Martin,” he said. “I’ll still read it in your eyes.”

 

Martin picked up his grapefruit fork and twirled it menacingly, at least until they both burst into giggles.

 

\- - -

 

“Not a bad little mountain at all,” Douglas adjudged as, with mutual sighs of relief, they sank into some chairs just outside the café of the Museum of Modern Art, with the whole of Salzburg laid out in the sunshine beneath them.

 

The trip up the Mönchsberg had been rather a good idea, Martin thought, smugly. There’d been the funicular railway up to the plateau to save them the climb, which had been fun, and then the Hohensalzburg castle to explore, with the Gothic staterooms in their splendour and a huge collection of arms and armaments. He’d never been too sure about visiting dungeons – he couldn’t help thinking of the people once in them who’d never seen daylight again – but that had been brief, and in the cellar there’d been the unexpected delight of the Marionette Museum. In fact, when they’d emerged back into the sunlight of the mountaintop to look for their midday meal, Martin had been surprised to realise how much time had passed and how easily and enjoyably it had done so.

 

Douglas turned out to be a sightseeing companion who was interested and fairly well informed but not – and Martin would have predicted otherwise – inclined to try and lecture or make out he knew more than the guidebook, or take things too seriously – although that latter quality was not surprising at all. About half way through the morning they’d started playing an umlaut-spotting game with the castle’s signage, one which bore more resemblance to ‘Yellow Car’ than perhaps either would have admitted, and Martin had won by a rapid reflex claiming of this café’s specials board advertising Brötchen.

 

Now, with the view of the old town before them and a menu with absolutely no puns on it in their hands, life felt really pretty decent.

 

“I think I’ll have the fishcakes,” Douglas said. “How about you?”

 

Martin surveyed the options, glancing automatically at the prices first. Their Salzburg Cards had got them free travel and entry to all the attractions they’d visited, but did not cover food, and this was not one of the pre-paid hotel meals.

 

“The garlic soup looks good,” he replied, with what he hoped was a fair degree of certainty.

 

Douglas eyed him for a moment but didn’t choose to say anything. Martin leant back in his chair, and looked out into the distance again. There were clouds gathering on the horizon, grey and blurry. The guidebooks had all agreed that it rained a lot here, and he had nothing like wet-weather gear. Or to be more accurate, he had no other changes of clothes at all, and he couldn’t very well wander around in his pilot’s uniform, as much as in some ways he would have liked to.

 

‘We’ll have to get some more clothes,” he observed, unable to keep the dread from his voice. Nothing about Salzburg, beautiful as it was, struck him as likely to create a large number of cheap clothing outlets.

 

“Well, one has to refresh the old wardrobe sooner or later,” Douglas said philosophically. “At least here we’ve got some time on our hands for it.”

 

“Don’t you like clothes buying either?”  

 

Douglas tilted his head to one side. “Sometimes I do. I like buying particular pieces, you know, a good jacket in just the right colour, or commemorative t-shirts – a weakness of mine, I will admit. But just the general stuff, the socks and pants and work shirts? That’s terribly dull. Helena buys… Helena bought all that for me, and, well, and the others before her.”

 

Douglas turned away, looking slightly uncomfortable. Martin tried to think of something terribly clever and amusing and mood-lightening to say, but was very much still working on it when Douglas spoke again.

 

“Do you know, this is the first holiday – one may as well call it a holiday – the first holiday I’ve been on since Helena left me? Never could stand doing this kind of thing on my own so I just… didn’t.”

 

“Oh?” Martin had absolutely no idea where to go with that one, and besides that he was surprised. “Don’t you… I mean, I thought, I mean, don’t you pick people - erm, women - pick women up when you’re…. I mean, you wouldn’t have to stay alone, would you?”

 

“Well, I’m not exactly twenty-seven anymore,” Douglas said, and then added, still not meeting Martin’s gaze: “What I’m trying to say is that I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad there wasn’t another seat in the Air Caledonia car, and I’m not stuck here talking to myself. So… I’m sorry it’s a bit of an arse for you, missing your van job, but, well, every cloud and all that.”

 

“Well, if being here with you means I get coffee in bed in the mornings,” Martin said lightly, still trying to find a way to make Douglas laugh, “then frankly you can come on all my holidays.”

 

Douglas did turn to look at him, and for a moment the expression on his face was hard to interpret. Then, to Martin’s relief, he grinned. “Yes, I did do that, didn’t I? Knew I’d come to regret it – I’m not saying it’s a regular service, not by any means. But I’ve always been an early riser and it’s a habit I’ve got into, over the years.”

 

 _The habit of making a cup of coffee for the person I’m with, except now I’m not usually with someone_ , he didn’t say, but Martin felt he understood the principle.

 

“I’ve never had anyone do that for me, not since I still lived with my Mum and Dad,” Martin offered in exchange. If Douglas was feeling a bit depressed about his life, he was in the perfect company to see how much worse it could get.

 

Douglas nodded, and they sat peacefully for a while, both looking out at the view and the clear, clear sky – no planes there, not today, not for the first time in maybe sixty years – until a waitress came to take their orders.

 

“I say, Fraulein,” Douglas asked her, before she left them, giving her his best debonair smile. “You couldn’t give us some advice, could you, about where dashing chaps such as ourselves could buy some new clothes round here?”

 

“In Salzburg? Oh, yes, many places.” She scribbled a short list onto a spare page of her orders pad, and handed it over to Douglas with a smile and some more explanations. As she finally walked away, Martin gave Douglas a raised eyebrow of his own.

 

“See? That’s what I mean. You can talk to girls like… well, like people.”

 

“Do you know what, Martin, I’m not even going to go there.” Douglas took another look over the list. “I fear she thought we wanted some of the fakey ‘traditional’ souvenir tat, but we might as well give these places a shot. Mind you, if you so much as look at a pair of lederhosen, I’ll drag you back to the airport and lock you in G-ERTI for the rest of the ash cloud.”

 

Martin narrowed his eyes. “That reminds me, Douglas,” he said sweetly. “Did you know that on this very mountain where we currently sit there is also the Nonnberg Convent, the place from which Maria sets forth in the first scenes of… now what was the name of that film? Anyway, she sings a lovely song about…”

 

“I will buy your lunch if you stop right now,” Douglas said quickly, holding up his hand.

 

Martin waited for a moment, certain he must be being patronised. But Douglas really just looked a mixture of amused and mildly irritated, and really the café was cheap enough in the relative scale of things.

 

“Fine, I’ll have some Sachertorte after my soup in that case,” he said, with what he hoped was a devious and evil smile.

 

But from the way Douglas smiled back at him, he wasn’t sure he’d succeeded.

 

\- - -

 

The first place on the waitress’ list was indeed a purveyor of tourist-grade lederhosen, dirndls and alpine hats, but, once Douglas had bought a rather expensive t-shirt (bearing a picture of Mozart in sunglasses) with a not-entirely-convincing show of reluctance, the shop owner pointed them on to some places more like what they needed.

 

A while later, Martin emerged from the cheapest of the shops they’d found and looked about the street for Douglas, who he’d left browsing through one of the more upmarket boutiques. Martin was conscious he’d taken quite a long time deliberating his own purchases, and had been rather expecting Douglas to be waiting on the pavement outside with a witty remark at the ready. But there was no sign of him.

 

It had now, as Martin had predicted, begun to rain in a sort of half-hearted and yet insistent drizzle, and lingering on the street was not appealing. Having taken one more look up and down the road, Martin walked quickly to what looked like a newsagents, thinking he might be able to browse there for a while more easily than in the delis or the souvenir emporiums.

 

He was only just across the threshold, standing dripping on the shop’s doormat, when he saw that Douglas was inside, at the magazine rack, flicking through a copy of _Aviation World_.

 

“I always knew you loved it really,” Martin said, and grinned as Douglas startled, almost dropped the magazine and then starting shoving it back on the rack as if surprised in reading something much more incriminating. Martin leant against the doorframe, shaking his head to try and get the worst of the rain from his hair before it could travel down his neck – he’d not wanted to put on his new anorak over his already-damp clothes, but he wasn’t sure now it’d been the best judgment call.

 

“I’ve actually finished choosing, if you can believe it,” Martin continued, as Douglas with a look of deep ire, was made to purchase the magazine by the keen-eyed proprietor who’d seen him bend it. “All that’s missing is umbrellas and, as you can probably see, we’re going to need them.”

 

“That or an Ark,” Douglas agreed. He was grinning now, and opened a plastic bag hanging on his arm, producing two small folding umbrellas. One was dark blue, neatly matching the colour of their uniform shirts. The other was bright green and patterned with multiple ladybirds. “Your weapon, sir,” he said with mock-ceremony and, naturally, handed Martin the ladybirds.

 

Martin ducked his head in acknowledgment. “Thank you ever so much.”

 

“You’re very welcome, I’m sure. Shall we get going?”

 

“Make sure that magazine’s well wrapped in the bag,” Martin said, solicitously. “Would be sad if the pages went all wobbly from the water, it’s got some cracking articles.”

 

“’Cracking’?” Douglas repeated, in tones of amazement. “Where did you escape from? An Enid Blyton novel?”

 

But it was not much of a counter-attack, and Martin was grinning smugly as they made their way out into the rain. Martin put up his umbrella and was genuinely glad of it. Waterproof was waterproof, after all, whatever it looked like, and he could live with ladybirds.

 

“It did catch you, didn’t it? You look like a drowned rat.” Stepping out beside him, Douglas gave him another surveying glance. “I hope you got enough new clothes to change into a complete dry set? I could, at a pinch and at a very competitive interest rate, lend you some socks.”

 

“Much as I’d love to know, Douglas, how you calculate,and still more how you pay, compound interest on socks, I got a three-pair packet.” Martin patted one of his bags. “They do have little goats on, but you’d never be able to tell under trousers.”

Douglas snapped his fingers in a show of annoyance. “Dammit! I could have got you the goat umbrella, and then you’d be matching.”

 

“I’ll live,” Martin told him dryly.

 

Their way back to the hotel was complicated by their journey through the Altstadt, where many streets passed under or between buildings via narrow tunnels and passageways, in which umbrellas became either superfluous or sometimes downright dangerous, leading to constant pauses to raise or lower them. Martin’s hands were already cold and at one point he realised there was a sharper ache across his knuckles, and saw he’d cut himself somehow and was now bleeding into the rainwater on his skin. He lifted his hand to his mouth to suck at the wound and looked up to see Douglas watching him.

 

“Problem?” Douglas asked.

 

“Caught on an umbrella-spoke, I think,” Martin explained, showing his injury. “It’s nothing really.”

 

He turned, eager to get to the hotel and into the dry, and found himself running straight into someone pacing very quickly the other way, the impact of the collision sending them both staggering backwards; Martin slipped partly to the ground, sticking out the hand not holding the umbrella to halt his fall and feeling the palm graze on the cobbles as his wrist was jarred.

 

“Martin!” He heard Douglas calling out, alongside the exclamations and apologies of the other person who’d fallen, a man who was also speaking English, albeit with an Australian accent.

 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, barging into people?” Douglas was shouting, and after a moment Martin was surprised to see that it was the other man Douglas was haranguing, not himself. Douglas’ manner could really be quite imposing when he chose, and the stranger was backing off, hands raised in apology.

 

“Douglas?” Martin called. “Could you…?”

 

It worked. Douglas left the cowering Australian alone and came to offer Martin a hand off the ground. As Martin moved, his jeans stuck to his skin, which meant that now pretty much all his clothes were soaked through and fairly muddy into the bargain.

 

“Do you happen to remember if the hotel offers a laundry service?” Martin asked. “Because if not you’re going to have to charm the location of a launderette out of our next waitress.”

 

“I’m sure we can sort it out,” Douglas said, stepping back to further assess him. “God, yes, you’ve really had it. Bloody fool!” he snapped in the direction of the other man, who’d taken advantage of the distraction to mutter more apologies and retreat quietly from the scene.

 

“It was as much my fault as his,” Martin pointed out. “To be honest, I’m still surprised you didn’t give him a tenner and a handshake for furnishing you with the sight of me going arse over tit.”

 

Douglas looked at him for a moment. Martin had expected his words to provoke a laugh or perhaps a devilishly guilty smirk, but Douglas actually appeared almost startled, like the words had come as a surprise to him too. He rallied quickly, though, his expression becoming one of stern practicality: the commander of the crisis.

 

“Come on then, quick march,” Douglas said, as if Martin hadn’t said anything. “Unless you want to catch your death of pneumonia?” And he set off, striding at such a pace that Martin had to put some effort into keeping up with him.

 

\- - -

 

Back in their hotel room, Martin stripped off his jumper and carried it to the bathroom to deposit in a soggy heap. Then he rolled up his sleeves and went to put his cut and scraped hands under the hot tap.

 

“What do you think?” he called out, overcome for a moment by a little wave of uncertainty. Clearly it was just a superficial injury, clearly he’d had worse than this falling over in the playground as a child, and couldn’t possibly need a tetanus shot, but it was his _hands_. His hands that _flew_ him. If he’d been alone he would have fretted over it silently for an hour or two, and finally talked himself down; it was nice to have someone else to turn to for reassurance.

 

“Let’s see,” Douglas stepped up behind him. “Oh, that’ll be fine.” He reached out to bring the hand with the umbrella-spoke cut up to the light. “Must be sore as hell, I’m sure, but it’s fine. You want some help with the plasters?”

 

‘How long were you in medical school for again?” Martin asked, feeling his voice shake just a little with relief; Douglas was awfully good at definitively asserting things. Douglas was still standing behind him, a solid, warm wall, and still holding his hand up.

 

“You don’t need a medical degree or even part of one to know it’s hard to put plasters on your own dominant hand,” Douglas pointed out. “Poor old hand,” he added, half under his breath, and he ran his thumb over Martin’s palm.

 

Martin’s mouth went quite dry, and anything he could think of to say caught in his throat.

 

Douglas seemed to feel it too. He abruptly let Martin’s hand go and stepped away, cold air taking his place, until he was barely in the bathroom any more. He had the expression of something like shock that Martin had seen on him earlier, still just as impossible to interpret.

 

“Well, thank you for the offer,” Martin made himself say. “I thought I’d have a shower, actually, first, just get completely wet and then completely dry again, and into the new clothes, you know. But after that I could…”

 

“Right,” Douglas said. He was still backing away. “Right, well, I’ll give you the run of the room. I’ll go down to the bar I think.”

 

“OK?” Martin felt a strange bolt of uncertainty, something weirdly like anxiety, but it was formless, unfamiliar. And although he’d not thought of it yet, it would be much easier to sort out getting dressed in the new stuff without another person in the room. “Yeah, thanks, OK.”

 

Douglas gave a quick nod and almost dashed out of the door, pausing only to pick up his room key from where he’d left it mere minutes earlier.

 

\- - -

 

Martin sat curled up in one of the armchairs, trying to fix his attention on the television set. He’d found an English-language cable channel that seemed to be devoted to the sitcom output of the BBC in the mid 1970s, and just now there was some show about the tribulations of a newly married couple in the suburbs. Further detail than that, though, Martin could not have reported – he’d been too busy worrying about Douglas.

 

At first, getting on with getting himself clean and comfortable, he’d not thought of anything else. He’d tried to go quite quickly, so as not to be still changing when Douglas returned, and when he’d sat down at last - dried and dressed - without sight of the other man, he’d initially felt only relief.

 

But time had passed, and then more time – nearly two hours, now – and he’d started to think. About how odd Douglas had been. About how Douglas had been talking about his marriage – sounding regretful? Martin wasn’t sure, but had to presume so. Maybe Douglas was thinking about the holidays he’d used to have, and the beautiful women he’d used to have to them with.

 

And then there was the fact that he’d said he was going to the bar.

 

Not that it was any of Martin’s business what Douglas’ vices were, or whether he indulged them. He just wished he could think what Carolyn might have done, if they’d all been together, or knew what the various ex-Mrs Richardsons had found it advisable to do, although their departures didn’t speak highly for their ability to fit into Douglas’ existence.

 

But then it was Douglas’ existence, Douglas’ business. Douglas had been in control of himself for years, he was perfectly capable, as well Martin knew, of visiting a place where alcoholic drinks were served and not ordering one. And who was Martin, to appoint himself any kind of minder?

 

But despite all his reasoning, a few minutes later he found himself grabbing up his own key and going downstairs.

 

\- - -

 

Douglas was not to be found at the bar in the Hotel Musicale’s restaurant, and for a moment Martin was floored by a surge of hopelessness.

 

But, as he wandered slowly back through the main foyer, casting a glance out of the window and wondering where else to try and whether he should, he caught sight of a sign giving directions down some stairs he’d not noticed before, apparently leading to another bar in the cellar.

 

Martin carefully descended, and found himself in a glittering box of mirrors. The room, he saw, was intended to imitate the film version of the von Trapp villa’s ballroom – a baroque confection of gilt and glass. Whilst he reckoned that a lot of the ‘mouldings’ were a trompe l’oeil effect, the sight of himself in the mirrors – spiky-haired and harassed looking – was real enough.

 

It was in the mirror that Douglas must have spotted him, because there he was, seated at the bar, turning round to look at Martin and frown, perturbed.

 

Martin felt suddenly very stupid. What on Earth was he thinking, trailing Douglas around the place like some sort of lost child, or someone unable to be alone? He was perfectly used to spending time on his own, and so too now must Douglas be, and he should have left the man to it and taken the chance to relish his own solitude.

 

At the same time, though, he couldn’t help letting his gaze drift to the empty glass Douglas was cradling in his hands.

 

Another beat of time passed between them, and then Douglas took a deep breath and inclined his head, beckoning Martin over towards him.

 

“Join me?” Douglas asked, as Martin got closer. “Here, bartender!” he called out. “One more of these for me and another for my friend here.”

 

Martin stood, silent, watching, until the drinks had been poured and lined up before them.

 

“There now,” Douglas said. “Not too sweet, not too sour. Just too pink.”

 

Trying not to let his relief sigh out too audibly, Martin reached for his glass and took a sip, enjoying the tongue-wincing hit of the lemon followed by the fresh, understated sweetness.

 

“It really is a ridiculously delicious and refreshing beverage,” Douglas commented, watching him. “How’s the hand?”

 

“Oh, it’s fine.” Martin held it out in front of him, taking another critical look at how he’d patched it up. “I admit, I don’t think I put the plaster on very well, in fact the first one got all stuck to itself and I had to throw it away, but since you weren’t there and I didn’t know if you…” He made himself cut off that line of enquiry, and took another quick swallow of his drink. “Yes, yum. I wonder where the pinkness comes from?”

 

“I think it’s usually because you’re embarrassed and think you’ve made a bit of a tit of yourself,” Douglas said. “But this time you’re not the only one, so… Shall we drink and forget?”

 

“Fine by me.” Martin cleared his throat. “You don’t have to explain anything to me, I know you must miss her.”

 

“What? Who?”

 

“Helena? I thought you were… well, you said you were used to being on holiday with her, but… you know.”

 

Douglas’ eyes widened. “Oh yes, that ‘her’? Yes. Yes, I think I do miss her. I must. I think that’s it, actually. I think I’m used to being with her – with one of them, anyway – and I think that’s what the whole thing is. So it’s fine.” He took another deep breath and nodded. “It’s all fine.”

 

Martin was totally bemused, but the conclusion seemed positive, so he stifled the urge to paraphrase a certain person’s assertion and say that ‘anything you say twice must be true’. Pulling up a stool to sit on, he helped himself to the bowl of salted peanuts.

 

He settled back a little and let his spine relax. For the first time since leaving the Mönchsberg, he was starting to feel properly warm.

 

“How about a round of ‘Last Letter, First Letter’?” he suggested. “I’ll let you pick the theme. But not,” he stifled a happy grin at the thought, “the contents of the new edition of _Aviation World_ – you’ve had a head start on me there!”

 

Douglas groaned. “Oh God. How long have you been working up to that – I can scarcely call it a joke – to that quip? No, don’t tell me, it’s painful even to think of. Oh, come on, you can’t still be laughing?”

 

Martin took another sip of his drink and bit his lip, fighting the quivering of his mouth. “I’m sorry Douglas, but, oh, what was it you called me when you found about my subscription? Captain Keenpants McKeen von Keenface?”

 

Douglas drew himself up and cleared his throat. “None one of my best verbal constructs, I will admit, but I had a cold that week.” He rolled his eyes as Martin started chuckling again, but he was smiling too. “OK, OK, I read it too. I do not, however, subscribe.”

 

“Well, no, you wouldn’t need to skulk around reading it off the shelf in Austrian newsagents if you did, would you?” Martin had a happy notion and grabbed Douglas’ arm. “But you actually had to buy it, didn’t you? Today? So could I read it later?”

 

Douglas looked at him for a second and then burst out laughing. “Nothing, it’s nothing,” he said, waving away Martin’s indignant noises, “but really, this is in no way whatsoever all like being on holiday with my wife. Any of my wives.”

 

Martin, narrowing his eyes, wondered whether to demand further explanation and reassurance that the joke was not at his expense, but Douglas was now looking much more relaxed and Martin wasn’t at all sure that his similarity to an ex-wife was something he cared to defend.

 

“Now, right,” Douglas continued, rubbing his hands together. “A theme for ‘Last Letter, First Letter’. Well, how about musicals? Any musical, stage or screen or both, except That One.”

 

“Fine, you’re on.” Martin accepted a lemonade refill from the barman and tried to select a suitable opening gambit. “ _Cats_.”

 

“ _South Pacific_.” Douglas answered at once.

 

“ _Carousel_.”

 

“ _Les Miserables_.”

 

“Hmmm,” Martin frowned. “ _Starlight Express_. I’ve never seen that. I wish they’d revive it, it looked rather good.”

 

“It was.” Douglas raised a hand to summon more peanuts. “ _Singing in the Rain_.”

 

~

 

\- - -

**Four**

\- - -

 

They got back to their bedroom half an hour later still arguing over the validity of _Cinderella_.

 

“It’s not a musical,” Martin reasoned. “It’s a Disney film with songs in. There’s a difference.”

 

“You used _The Lion King_.” Douglas pointed out, turning the lights on.

 

“Yes, but that was on stage.”

 

“But before that, it was a Disney film with songs in.”

 

“How is it,” Martin asked, as he sank down into one of the chairs and started getting his shoes off, “that you know all these musicals and like so many of them, and yet can’t stand _The Sound of Music_?”

 

Douglas had gone over to close the green and white curtains over the French windows. Now he looked over. “Forty two.”

 

“You’re not still… OK, you’re still playing it. Of course you are. Anyway, come on, why?”

 

“I don’t know what you’re imagining, Martin, but there isn’t some great big story here, some intense, Freudian experience that will unlock to you the secrets of my personality. It’s just a not very pleasant memory for me.”

 

Martin studied him, a little disconcerted. He’d thought that he and Douglas had got to the point of trusting each other with this sort of thing. Admittedly, a lot of the awkward secrets they knew about each other came more from accident than confession, but he’d thought that very situation had given them some mutual understanding. Certainly, at this point in Martin’s life, Douglas knew more about him than anyone else did, with Carolyn running a close second, but perhaps he was being ridiculous to expect the reverse to be true.

 

“Fine, listen and listen well, because I’m not repeating it,” Douglas said suddenly, cutting into Martin’s thoughts. Martin looked up – he’d not meant to curl up in the chair, but realised now that he had.

 

“The film passed me by somewhat – I was in my early teens when it came out, and not a frequent musical-attender,” Douglas began. He was standing behind the other chair, one hand resting on its back. “And then, there was one year when it was on TV on Christmas Eve. And my first marriage had just broken down for the third and final, irrevocable time, and I had to call my mother and tell her that Christmas lunch was off, and that she might not get to see her only granddaughter any time soon.

 

“But _The Sound of Music_ was on, and I told myself I was watching it, and that my mother probably was too, and that I couldn’t call her till it was over, and so I put it off. And since I was lying to myself anyway, I could have done anything, but somehow I felt like I had to sit there like a cabbage, watching the whole bloody film.”

 

Martin stared. “And then?”

 

Douglas spread his hands out in a shrug. “And then I called her, and she cried. I ruined her Christmas. She got over it. The custody issues got sorted and she got as much access to my daughter as she wanted and there were other Christmases for her. I remarried. Then I remarried again. I told you, this isn’t a very epic story, just… one of those little mundane, sad moments in life.” Douglas turned away, as if to gaze through the window, but with the curtains closed all too obviously staring into his own mind’s eye. His profile was cast into shadow and his hair, disarrayed by rain and imperfectly dried by central heating, fell forward about his face. For a moment there was silence, and Martin wondered if he should speak, or reach out.

 

“Now, come on, fair’s fair,” Douglas said, turning round and letting out a sigh. He came to sit in the other chair. “I told you why I don’t like it, now you tell me why you bloody love it so much.”

 

Martin shrugged. “I don’t know. I always did like it. We had it on tape and I watched it a lot. I liked the songs, and the action, and the flying bit at the start. And…”

 

“What?”

 

“You’ll tease me.”

 

“But surely that’s a given anyway?”

 

“Well, alright,” Martin took a deep breath. “The bit with Maria, when she runs back to the convent because she’s afraid to face Captain von Trapp. And the Reverend Mother says ‘These walls were not built to shut out problems. You have to face them. You have to live the life you were born to live.’ That was very helpful to me at one point.”

 

Douglas gave him a long look.

 

“OK,” Martin prompted, irritably. “Where’s the joke?”

 

“No joke,” Douglas told him. “I was just…” he gestured incomprehensibly in the air.  “Listening.”

 

“Oh. Well, good.” Martin went over to the refreshment station to give his hands something to do other than go to his mouth so he could chew his fingernails. “Tea? Coffee?”

 

“I might have a little sit down,” Douglas confessed, which Martin knew well enough to be code for ‘nap’. “And then, oh sod it, do you know what? Let’s watch the damn film.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Well why should I let myself hate it just because of something that happened years ago that had nothing to do with the film itself? And you’d like to. And I’m on holiday with you, after all, I might as well keep that in mind.”

 

“What about dinner?”

 

Douglas spread his arms wide, offering the riches of the world. “We’ve got room service. We’ll eat it up here. And as an added bonus I won’t have to look at any of this insane hotel’s musical murals again today. I may end up conceding that the film isn’t entirely the spawn of Satan, but those murals are 100% guaranteed devil-jizz.”

 

“Please tell me I can dare you to write that line in the visitors’ book?”

 

Douglas bowed his head ceremoniously. “I will give that due thought.” He stretched expansively and then leant back in his chair, eyes closing.

 

Martin made himself a cup of tea - careful to keep the noise down - and opened a little packet of ginger biscuits, and dug out _Aviation World_ for a good read before he woke Douglas to order dinner.

 

\- - -

 

Martin reached for another Dorito and then made a lunge for the cheese-flavoured dip.

 

“What is it I recall from barely half an hour ago?” Douglas asked, continuing to hold the bowl of dip away and above his head - out of Martin’s reach - and somehow despite this injecting affronted dignity into his tone. “Didn’t someone in this room say, ‘What on Earth are you ordering crisps and dip for? You’ll not want that and dinner?’ And yet even now do I not find my cheese dip assailed on all sides and my bag of Doritos mostly pilfered? Could it be someone was utterly, totally wrong?”

 

“You knew how tasty it was!” Martin protested. “If you hadn’t given me that one to try…”

 

“Yes, it is truly my generosity that is at fault here. Damn my giving nature.”

 

Martin narrowed his eyes, feinted left and then darted right, successfully mashing the chip he held into the dip, along with much of his hand.

 

“Watch it!” Douglas shifted back a little, checking down his clothes for errant condiments. “You’ll be the one phoning for replacement cushion covers or even replacement carpet if this goes everywhere, I warn you.”

 

There was a genuine risk to both items, as they had – to facilitate better sharing of the dip, at least until Douglas decided to make it more of a sort of border warfare – come to sit on the bedroom floor in front of the TV, perching on the cushions from the chairs and ones usually decorating the bed. Onscreen, favourite things were being enumerated.

 

Douglas had begun his viewing of the film by keeping up a running commentary of snide remarks and rude jokes and had even paused the image to illustrate a point in his theories of the relative shag-ability of the various nuns, but after a little this had subsided and Martin was pleased to see him now restricting himself to an occasional, and often genuinely funny remark. That was the pleasure of watching something with a companion, of course, having a chat over what you were both seeing, and Martin had forgotten just how much fun it could be.

 

And this was a companion, furthermore, that Martin didn’t have to worry about trying to impress, because if he was honest with himself that ship had sailed years ago, and whom he didn’t feel too eager to please. He hoped Douglas would at least moderately like the film, because that would just be nicer all round, but if Douglas didn’t like it, Douglas would say so, quite straightforwardly – well, perhaps not in the linguistic sense, but he wouldn’t beat about the bush. Then they’d argue, and then they’d move on. For someone with Martin’s problems with social cues and conventions, that knowledge was awfully relaxing.

 

“This’ll keep me going a while,” Martin said now, reaching for a chip and using it to scrape some dip from the mess on his other hand, then eating with relish.

 

“You’re acting as if I haven’t just proven that you were wrong,” Douglas said accusingly. His voice sounded strangely hoarse.

 

Onscreen, the song stopped abruptly and the change in volume made them both turn their heads to look. They watched for a while, Martin continuing to eat and then licking the last leftovers of dip from his fingers before bowing to the needs of hygiene and getting up to wash his hand. He expected a further quip from Douglas to follow him, but none was forthcoming. Perhaps Douglas really was absorbed in the film.

 

“There’s the Festung Hohensalzburg,” Douglas pointed out onscreen as Martin came swiftly back from his ablutions. “And the Residenzplatz, look – I can see why they have these tie-in tours here, I’d forgotten how much actual location shooting there was in this.”

 

“Yes, although that’s wrong of course.” Martin sat back down. “Because they’ve just been shown crossing the river with the Mönchsberg behind them, so they can’t now be in the Altstadt.”

 

“Well, maybe this montage is meant to take place over more than one day.” Douglas sighed. “Honestly, what about suspension of disbelief? And oh God, you’ve got me defending it now. No, I’m not defending it. I refuse. I’m just arguing with you.”

 

Martin sniffed. “If they’re on location it’s all the more reason to get the details correct. They can’t just build a set and mess up the geography, like sticking St Paul’s Covent Garden at the wrong end of the piazza in _My Fair Lady_.”

 

“Oh, pipe down and have some cheesy dip.” Douglas passed the bowl over. “I will admit I don’t want to eat so much as to spoil my Tafelspitz mit Kartoffeln when it comes.”

 

Martin gave him a triumphant smirk. “Is that so? Or really, is the food distracting you? Do you want to be able to concentrate on the nice songs?”

 

“Yes, Martin, I’m desperate to hear about some things that Do, Re and Mi can stand for. Ah, speak of the devil.”

 

There had been a knock at the door. Martin paused the DVD and went over to answer. A young man pushed in a trolley with their main meals and a large box of chocolates which they’d ordered in lieu of a pudding, being easier to spin out through a long film and also easier to share whilst sitting on the floor.

 

“Enjoy your meal, and your evening, gentlemen,” the waiter said in a low, meaningful tone, clearly having formed his own deductions as to why the supposed honeymooners had ordered a load of chocolate and didn’t intend to leave their room.

 

Martin blushed but tried to remind himself that, as Douglas said, regardless of anything else, it was nobody else’s business.

 

“Right,” Douglas was saying, as soon as the waiter had left them. “You bring the cutlery, let’s get this picnic on the road. Or, to be precise, on the floor.”

 

\- - -

 

“Maria,” said the Reverend Mother, onscreen. “These walls were not built to shut out problems…” And the music began to swell in preparation for her solo.

 

Martin took a heavy breath. Talking to Douglas had brought all the memories into focus, and watching this scene now he was reminded of _then_ , of all of it, of how it had been.

 

But it wasn’t _then_ any more. He’d done it; he’d held on and kept going, and time had passed and life had got better. Here he was, after all, spending a week abroad as just part of the crazy whirl of his career as a pilot, his career he had damn well achieved in the end. Half those idiots from school were probably unemployed, or stuck in dead-end jobs supporting the children of loveless marriages and stupid, big, semi-detached houses with giant, gleaming, modern bathrooms…

 

He drew his knees up to his chin and hugged his arms round them.

 

Onscreen they continued to sing about mountains.

 

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?” he heard Douglas ask.

 

Martin twisted his head to look at him, keeping his hands gripped tightly. “Why this sudden interest in my life? You must have enough ammunition to tease me for the next decade as it is.”

 

He’d meant to be wryly amusing, to deflect with an in-joke, but it hadn’t sounded very funny and he could see something like hurt crossing Douglas’ face. Martin blinked, thrown. The echo of unhappiness that had come with the memory had made his heart beat faster, and it hadn’t stopped yet.

 

“It’s stupid,” he explained, uncurling a little and leaning his weight on one arm, inclining himself toward Douglas. “And it doesn’t deserve one more minute of my time in talking about it, do you see? It’s just the usual, well… all that stuff about what you want your life to be, and what it is, and maybe it’s not exactly right but fuck it, the bastards didn’t get you down in the end. Like that.”

 

Douglas nodded slowly. Martin felt strangely heavy still – perhaps it was the effect of another splendid meal, but then he also felt a sort of ache all over his skin. Or not quite an ache, not quite warmth - something thick and soft and somehow soothing and exciting at the same time. He hadn’t had any alcohol with his meal, but now he would have sworn otherwise.

 

He felt very aware of the shape of himself, very aware of Douglas looking at him.

 

“I do know that feeling,” Douglas said now, with a nod towards the screen. “Wanting to hide. That’s where the drinking came in, actually.”

 

“You? Really? Wanting to hide? Like, afraid?” Martin had twisted round more now, facing Douglas, trying to look closer, to make sense of this.

 

“Try ‘terrified’,” Douglas said, and drew a deep breath, and reached out, and rested his hand on Martin’s shoulder.

 

Martin wasn’t sure why he wasn’t panicking. He could feel the shock and surprise trying to burst through him, but everything seemed to have slowed down, treacle-rich and gliding, softly, slowly, inevitably. Douglas’ hand moved to cup his face. Martin leaned in; Douglas seemed to want him to. His skin was burning hot and Douglas’ hand was blissfully cool, and Douglas smelt like everything normal, like certainty, like the bits of his day when life was good.

 

Douglas’ mouth tasted of beef stew and chocolate, and the sharp hit of lemonade. Both his lips and Martin’s were dry and their teeth clashed but they kept together, finding a rhythm. Martin had never before been kissed by someone he knew well already – Douglas made a sort of grunt and Martin knew it was approval, and pressed closer.

 

He was holding onto Douglas’ shoulders, didn’t remember moving to do so. Holding tight, wanting this, needing this and finally able to reach for it.

 

Douglas’ mouth was open under his; Martin moaned, the sound breaking half way, a wave of heat surging through him. Something hurt – it was his hands, the tips of his fingers digging in, desperate. They were sitting on the floor, their legs were in the way, they couldn’t get any closer together and that was an appalling flaw in strategy.

 

They broke, breathing hard.

 

“Oh God,” Douglas said. He was panting, his eyes wide, scared. “Oh God, Martin…”

 

The panic was rising again in Martin’s chest. “I’m sorry, I’m…” he tried, gasping.

 

“Are you?” Douglas asked him, with painful earnestness, and Martin couldn’t answer, didn’t know, couldn’t believe this moment, couldn’t stand this moment another second. He collapsed back towards Douglas and was caught up again, feeling Douglas’ fingers going into his hair, combing shivers through his scalp. The world was shifting, tilting; Douglas was leaning back, slowly, Martin’s weight bearing them both gently down onto the cushions. Douglas groaned like it hurt him, and somewhere very distantly there was music again.

 

“No, sorry, just a minute,” Douglas said, after a while, and Martin flinched back rapidly, sitting up and then back on his heels.

 

Douglas was rubbing at his calf. “Fuck, sorry, my foot was going numb.”

 

Martin’s heart was going to hammer loose in his chest, unless his lungs burnt out first. He was aware of sweat cooling damply under his clothes, of how sore his lips were, of the taste of Douglas, of the aching, wanting buzzing all along his skin and between his legs.

 

“I don’t understand,” Martin heard himself saying. It summarized matters to an extent.

 

Douglas licked his lips. Martin wanted to lean in again, and didn’t.

 

“Well…” Douglas gave a helpless shrug. “I suppose you could say that sometimes some men have several failed marriages because they like women too much. And sometimes some men have several failed marriages because they don’t really like women enough.”

 

Martin blinked at him. “No, I mean, me? Now? I don’t…”

 

“You don’t want to?”

 

“No! I mean yes! Yes! Not ‘Yes I don’t’ but, I mean…” Martin got up and turned and made his way – only half stumbling – to get a bottle of water from the minibar. He drained it quickly and took a deep breath, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth. Douglas was still sitting on the floor, looking up at him. Douglas. Ordinary, daily, familiar Douglas, Douglas who he knew and thought he had the measure of.

 

He wanted Douglas. That didn’t seem like a surprise, which was in itself surprising.

 

Douglas wanted him. Wanted something, at least, from him. That was going to take a little getting used to.

 

“If you’re finding it somewhat bloody confusing and scary that that just happened, I’m right with you,” Douglas said now, still staying where he was. “But what’s important is whether you regret it. Whether you want me to get the hell out or not.”

 

Martin frowned. “Why would you have to be the one to get out? I thought I was the one who kissed you? I did the second time, anyway.”

 

Douglas stared at him for a moment and then laughed dryly. “Well, as long as that’s what you’re going to fixate on to be indignant about.”

 

“But Douglas,” Martin said, and now he felt a little easier, less like he was going to faint or have to run away or suddenly wake up from a dream. He crossed the room again, more slowly this time, and carefully dropped to his knees at Douglas’ side, bringing their faces more or less level. “You can’t stand me.”

 

“You know I can, though,” Douglas murmured, and kissed him quickly, barely brushing their lips together.

 

Martin wanted to move in for more, but Douglas held his hand up, gently pushing him back. “It’s late, Martin, and that was… that was a lot, for both of us. And if we keep at it I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep from… I mean, we’re sharing a bed anyway, I know, although I could sleep in the chair if you’d rather, but…”

 

“If you sleep in one of those chairs you’ll complain about your spine for the rest of the week,” Martin corrected him. “If I’m uncomfortable _I’ll_ sleep in a chair, thank you very much. I’d rather that than hear you discussing your famous MRI scan of 2011 that might have shown disc degeneration but probably didn’t.”

 

“Why is it hardest not to kiss you when you’re utterly infuriating?”

 

Martin bit his lip, and couldn’t hold back his smile. “I know what you mean, I do. I just don’t… This doesn’t exactly happen to me often. I don’t know the protocol.”

 

“Believe it or not, Martin, there isn’t actually an SOP – updated or otherwise – for getting stuck in a foreign country due to a volcanic ash cloud, having to impersonate a married couple with your fellow pilot and then accidentally snogging them whilst watching Julie Andrews play the guitar.”

 

“Accidentally?”

 

“Well, I wasn’t exactly planning on it.” Although they were sitting apart, Douglas’ hand was still on Martin’s arm and almost absentmindedly he’d started rubbing gently over Martin’s sleeve with the pad of his thumb. “I thought I’d talked myself out of it, but… But damn if you don’t get under my skin.”

 

Martin drew in closer, slowly, and kissed him and wasn’t pushed away. After a little he pulled back again to breathe. Some of the alarmingly fervent urgency of earlier had dissipated; he was drained, it had already been a long day two hours back. He found himself having to stifle a yawn.

 

“Yes, bedtime.” Douglas started shifting, manoeuvring himself up into standing position with a groan as his back clicked and then reaching down to offer Martin his hand. Martin remembered this same motion, earlier out in the rain. Perhaps Douglas did too, because when he had Martin’s hand he didn’t pull him up at once, but turned it over, inspecting the bandage.

 

“You wanted to kiss me then too!” Martin exclaimed as he stood, bright with revelation. “In the bathroom, when you offered to help me. You wanted to kiss me!”

 

The look Douglas gave him in reply sobered him considerably. It was intense, dark - almost hungry.

 

“I want to do worse than kiss you, muttonhead,” Douglas said, and his voice was low, hoarse at the edges. “But not tonight. Not any more tonight.” It was nearly pleading.

 

Martin swallowed hard and took his hand away. “Of course. But no one has to sleep in a chair. At least, I don’t mind if you don’t.”

 

Douglas flashed him a grateful smile, and went to pick up the plates and bowls from the floor. Martin assisted and together they got the cushions back on the chairs and neatly straightened, and rescued the Doritos packet, which they seemed to have rolled on at some point, but which luckily had been so empty as not to spill crumbs anywhere in its wake.

 

“Hot chocolate?” Martin asked, tentatively. “Or cocoa, at least, anyway? There’s sachets by the kettle, we wouldn’t have to call anyone.”

 

“That would be very nice, thank you.” Douglas put the last glass down on the tray the food had come on. 

 

They changed and washed in comparative silence, and settled into bed with their drinks, both reading and rather carefully not making eye contact or otherwise acknowledging the other’s presence, Douglas was back at his brick of twentieth century history, and Martin flung himself headlong into _Aviation World_. The silence and the very distance between them had a thickness to it, like the echo of nothing after an alarm. Martin was aware of it all – of Douglas, inches away, of the soreness of his own lips, of the receding ache in his groin. The memories bubbled up to fizz in his skin, too warm and making him shift against his pyjamas. But alongside that was something else – a pleasing, soft exhaustion.

 

He thought perhaps that if Douglas had not been so obviously overwhelmed, he might himself have been more so. But Douglas needed reassurance, needed careful handling maybe even more than he did, and that made everything easier.

 

It provoked such intense affection in him, he found, that thought that Douglas must be taken care of. And the worst of it was that the feeling wasn’t new, not really, more like something in a daily landscape that grows so slowly as to make one scarcely notice it has appeared.

 

When it was time for the light to go out, Martin took a long look, uncertain whether to ask, whether it would be more agreeable for either or both of them to just keep the silence going. But Douglas met his gaze and nodded, almost imperceptibly. Martin leant into him and kissed his cheek, gently, quick. He went to draw back but Douglas raised a hand to cradle his face again, and Martin felt it one last time before his dreams, the dry-rough stroke of Douglas’ thumb against his skin.

 

~

 

\- - -

**Five**

\- - -

 

Martin wasn’t sure of the time when he came awake – there was light creeping round the edges of the curtains, though, enough that he could see across the room, falling back into himself after a dream-filled sleep, remembering where he was and what had happened.

 

His first impulse, frankly, was to run away. To get away from this situation and everyone involved, far away, until he didn’t have to think about it any more.

 

Gingerly, he sat up in the bed, rubbing his eyes. Douglas was still beside him, curled on his side, facing away. Martin turned to look, able to make out the back of Douglas’ neck, the pale skin of his hand and upper arm where he’d thrown it out of the covers to rest on the pillow. He looked peaceful in sleep, and maybe a little vulnerable. Trusting. His hair had fallen into disarray, brushing across his cheeks, and Martin felt the idle wish to reach out and stroke it back into place.

 

He couldn’t just leave Douglas alone. Even though it was his own fear, his own dread, his own all too certain inadequacy making him embarrassed to stay. Whereas Douglas’ self-assurance could power a small country - or so Martin would have said until yesterday.

 

No, he couldn’t run, even if there had been anywhere to run to.

 

He drew up his knees and rested his chin on them, and let out a very quiet laugh. A part of his mind would insist on worrying about how much Douglas would tease him when he found out about all this, as if Douglas wasn’t absolutely literally here with him. But then here with him was another side to Douglas, not the Sky God who soared over everyone. Douglas the All-Conquering All-Heterosexual, it seemed, was as much an illusion as Douglas the Hard Drinking Bon Viveur, or at least very much not the whole truth.

 

Maybe Douglas wasn’t so much easy in his own skin as comfortable in his disguise. And Martin could still envy that, envy the hell out of that, but it changed things a little. Left him here, content in sharing Douglas’ warmth under the duvet, feeling an itching impulse to get closer still.

 

Shivering a little, Martin leant over to glance at his watch – half seven in the morning, not late enough to make facing the day compulsory, not too early to get up. He climbed carefully out of bed and padded over to the refreshment station, putting the kettle on.

 

When the coffee was ready, Douglas was awake, watching him in silence, face bleary with drowsiness.

 

“Here,” said Martin, bringing the mugs over. “Can you hold mine too while I get back in?”

 

There was a brief pause before Douglas answered. But he rallied, even managed something of his usual tone. “By all means.”

 

Martin shuffled once more under the duvet, leaning against the headboard, legs stretching out, and reached to take back his drink. Given how much his heart was already pounding, caffeine was probably the last thing he needed, but he took a long gulp anyway, glad of the warmth.

 

“Um. Alright?” Martin asked.

 

“Well, it’s not exactly like how Arthur makes coffee, but then that’s a very good thing.”

 

Martin bit his lip. So Douglas didn’t feel able to talk about it yet either. That was fine by him.

 

\- - -

 

The breakfast buffet, with a replenished array of buns and rolls, cheeses and meats, spreads and jams and fruit and little boxes of cereal, was a surreal reminder of how merely twenty-fours earlier they had sat in the same room with no atmosphere between them.

 

Martin had been the one to suggest going downstairs for breakfast. And perhaps he’d just wanted the security of other people around to further deflect any meaningful conversation, but if he did then Douglas clearly did too; he’d agreed quite readily. They were being precisely polite around each other, wary of all the undercurrents a sentence could carry; Martin wondered whether he ought to suggest they spend the day apart, or even fabricate a reason to, because he wasn’t sure how much longer he could walk this tightrope.

 

He’d had a hope at first that this might be the day they got away altogether, but Douglas’ routine with the weather forecast and a call back to Fitton had confirmed that the ash cloud had decided to bed in at least for another night. That was how Douglas had phrased it, and then looked away, as if conscious of what his words might betray of his thoughts.

 

Martin had been straying into that territory too, alongside the worry and the awkwardness. He was aware of Douglas in a very physical way and couldn’t shake it. Not when they were sat like this, sharing a table, and he could see the tiny line of stubble at the curve of Douglas’ jaw that had been missed when shaving. Not when they tried to reach for the butter together and their hands brushed. It was as if there was a current between them, lighting up Martin’s every nerve on each contact; he looked up at Douglas, caught his eye, saw his mouth fall slightly open and tensed, wondering…

 

“There they are!” a woman’s voice shouted across the room. Martin turned instinctively, and startled again as he found the speaker staring directly at him. “Yes! Yoo hoo! Mr and Mr Fennington-Dashiel!” she called. “Come on! We’re all waiting in the bus.”

 

“In the bus?” Douglas repeated slowly, eyes boggling.

 

The woman, who was middle-aged and wearing a luminescent green fleece, beamed, indulgence in her smile. “Yes! Location tour today! Had you forgotten?”

 

Martin turned to stare at Douglas, awaiting a plan. “We could be ill?” he suggested, hissing.

 

“We’re sitting here eating, you idiot.” Douglas fixed a smile on his face and waved at the woman. “Just a moment!” he called out, then lowered his voice again, speaking urgently. “We’ve been here long enough now that if we get caught they’ll not just laugh it off, they’ll charge us. And probably Carolyn too, if she doesn’t also get slapped with some kind of Information Governance penalty for showing us those documents. We’ve got to play this out.”

 

Martin nodded, apprehensive but in some ways more relaxed than he’d been all morning; being caught in an awkward crisis mid-scheme with Douglas was at least soothingly familiar.

 

And so it was that, minutes later, they were filing onto a large coach to take their place amongst the other tourists on what emerged to be the ‘Lakeland Locations’ portion of the ‘Sound of Salzburg’ tour.

 

\- - -

 

For all the (disconcertingly invisible) lurking ash-cloud, the day had turned out sunny and the decorative gardens of the Schloss Mirabell, which made their first stop, were far from an unpleasant place to be. Martin thought he could have enjoyed wandering peacefully over the gravel paths and round the boxwood hedges and flowerbeds, maybe even with Douglas beside him – ideally with the Douglas from yesterday, from when everything was easy.

 

Perhaps he and Douglas could have eventually fallen into a rhythm today too, walking and talking amongst the elegant plantings, but they were not destined to find out. Their guide had, since the moment they’d arrived, been determinedly organizing all the party into groups and choreographing repeated recreations of _The Sound of Music’s_ ‘ _Do Re Mi’_ dance sequences, displaying a steely expertise suggestive of having undertaken this project many times. She was highly concerned that no one should be left out, and corralled them with such efficiency that Martin eventually found himself skipping awkwardly past a line of statues, whilst watching Douglas do the same and trying not to burst out laughing.

 

“At least since you’ve seen the film again you had the vaguest idea what she was aiming for,” Martin pointed out afterwards, still struggling to catch his breath, as they were watching the other groups attempt not to crash into each other.

 

“Yes, well I wasn’t paying all my attention to the film, if you recall,” Douglas replied off-handedly, and Martin felt a shiver run down his spine and other responses quite unsuited to a public garden in the presence of a large group of people.

 

It might have been because he’d had the thought on his mind that he heard it - another tourist from their group, turning to her husband and in an only somewhat lowered tone muttering something about ‘homosexuals… didn’t expect… not very nice… children’s film after all… at least there aren’t any children here now… actually calling themselves ‘married’, I heard the guide reading the list… unnecessary…’

 

It was the looking, the pointing and the whispering; everything he’d ever feared. Martin felt his stomach go cold, and hardly dared to look at Douglas, who’d frozen still at his side, clearly having heard it too. So, it seemed, had others in the group, one of whom was now quietly begging his wife not to go over and correct the first woman or ‘cause a scene’.

 

Martin’s blush was rising again, the whole map of Indonesia and probably some landmasses beyond, and it wasn’t fair, because they hadn’t even… and how could she, how could someone _want_ to be so horribly…

 

“Martin,” Douglas was saying, softly. Martin looked up at him again. Douglas leant in – slowly, giving him a chance to break away – and kissed him very gently. “Sorry,” he muttered afterwards, as Martin blinked and sweated and tried to breathe. “But that idiot of a woman…”

 

“I’m not sorry,” Martin whispered back earnestly, angry and glad, and the smile that spread over Douglas’ face warmed him through again.

 

Perhaps the woman had seen them and was now even more offended, perhaps not – Martin wouldn’t have known, he was too busy watching that smile.

 

Since waking, he’d wondered if he’d half-dreamed how kissing Douglas had felt. But it was all he remembered, and more.

 

The whole group was told to lunch at the café attached to the gardens. The place was busy, the good weather having drawn out the crowds, and Martin and Douglas were squashed round a small, metal table with two women who explained that they were from America and had been to Salzburg every year since they were eighteen and always went on a _Sound of Music_ tour. Their relationship to each other was unclear, but they had a tendency to finish each other’s sentences; Martin felt a wave of envy, as usual, and after it a strange, thrilling reminder that he was not alone, not now, or at least he wouldn’t appear to be.

 

Before Martin could get Douglas alone they were being bustled back onto the bus, where they found that pens, pencils and pieces of paper had been left on all the seats.

 

“We’re going on out to the Aigen district now,” their guide explained loudly, standing in the aisle between the rows of seats to address them. She would, Martin thought, have given Carolyn a run for her money in sheer Napoleonic force of personality. “That’s where we’ll find the two villas that were used in the film for the front and back of the von Trapp house – yes, it was two places, that’s the magic of cinema!”

 

A couple of people tittered dutifully.

 

“It’s a little way to go,” she continued, “so during the journey we’ll be playing a fun _Sound of Music_ quiz game. There are twenty questions, so keep some space on the paper for them all, and I’ll start in just a moment. No peeking, now!”

 

Martin grabbed up his piece of paper and carefully numbered down the left hand side. He could lean the paper on his thigh, but that made it totally visible to Douglas and the person sitting behind him. He could lean on his palm, but it wasn’t really firm enough. He looked about, and caught sight of the two women from lunch – evidently old hands – taking turns to lean on each other’s backs to do the numbering.

 

But he couldn’t ask Douglas for that – that way, Douglas might be able to learn his answers from touch as he wrote them.

 

Curling an arm protectively round his paper, Martin settled for crossing his legs and bringing one thigh up much closer to his body, cackling happily as the questions commenced and he found himself well equal to them.

 

“Now, who’s ready to mark their quiz?” the guide asked at the conclusion.

 

“I am!” Martin informed her. “Shall we swap with the person in front of us?”

 

“Well, I usually say the person next door, or even you yourself…”

 

“But most of us know the person we’re sitting next to, which might induce leniency,” Martin pointed out. “And obviously we can’t mark ourselves.”

 

“Fine, the person in front, go nuts,” The guide waved in his direction and there was a buzz as the swapping got sorted out.

 

Martin’s glee only increased as the answers came. He’d been worried there wouldn’t be any extra credit for knowing not only that among the ‘children’ it was Charmian Carr whose sister could also be heard on the soundtrack, but also which child (Kurt) she dubbed for. Extra points were apparently on offer, though, and he ticked the answer in his hand once (this person had made a good effort, but not good enough) and happily thought of the two he’d receive.

 

Dismay came when the marking was finished.

 

“And there we are, all twenty covered,” the guide said brightly. “Wasn’t that fun? Now, we’re getting closer to the villas and you can see the scenery around us is changing. Soon, we’ll be able to see the road Maria dances along as she sings her number ‘I Have Confidence’, which, as we all know now after our quiz, was one of the songs written specifically for the film and does not appear in the stage show.”

 

“Excuse me?” Martin asked, raising his hand. “But aren’t we going to compare marks? Find out who won?”

 

The guide smiled very broadly. “It’s not really about winners, Mr Fennington-Dashiel, it’s just a chance to learn a little more about…”

 

“But you marked it! There has to be a top mark, if you marked it!”

 

“Darling?” he heard Douglas saying, and found Douglas had taken his hand into his. “Breathe. You beat me, anyway.”

 

“Yes, well, you put ‘Maria’ as the answer to all twenty questions.” Martin felt his mouth drying. Douglas was still holding his hand. The relative importance of the quiz did seem to be fading.

 

“Sneaked a peek did we?” Douglas made a face of shocked outrage. “Anyway, it got me two points so it wasn’t a bad strategy.”

 

“But, I…”

 

“Did you get them all right?”

 

Martin didn’t want to sound sulky, but rather feared he did. “Yes.”

 

“Well, you won, then, didn’t you?”

 

“Yes, but… I wanted to believe it. You can believe it if there’s a prize. Mind you, I bet those women from earlier got a lot too.”

 

“Martin?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Shut up.” And Douglas kissed him again.

 

Martin opened his eyes after a while, and blinked a bit.

 

“Well,” Douglas murmured. “If I’d known that was all it took I’d have tried it a long time ago.”

 

“You shut up! No, you wouldn’t have!” Martin told him, and leant back in. This lasted a little longer, and only the sound of someone else sneezing recalled Martin to where he was.

 

Douglas sat back looking rather pleased with himself. He still hadn’t let go of Martin’s hand. They stayed like that as the bus made the final approach to the first villa, Martin feeling something like delight racing up and down his spine.

 

They diligently viewed the front of the ‘front’ villa and, having piled back into the bus, a short time later were milling round the back of the ‘back’ one, spilling out across the terrace overlooking what Martin would have called a lake, but saw from the map was known as the Leopoldskroner Weiher – the rather more unprepossessing ‘pond’.

 

Douglas had walked down to the walls at the edge of the terrace, and was looking out over the water. Martin followed him. A mixture of excitement and agitation had been building in him since the culmination of the quiz. He wasn’t sure what was happening or where they were heading, or what would happen later or whether this was the best or worst day of his life so far. Uncertainty made his stomach hurt, and being under a semi-public eye didn’t help.

 

He didn’t know what to say to Douglas, but didn’t feel easy, either, to just come and stand next to him and wait.

 

“Do you remember seeing all this in the film?” he asked, having to lick his dry lips to speak. “There’s the boating accident, and of course the pink lemonade, and then…” _And then the love scene_ , he bit back.

 

Douglas was leaning his elbows on the wall, apparently studying the opposite bank.

 

Martin cleared his throat. “We never did finish it, in the end, did we?”

 

Douglas turned a little. “No, well, don’t spoil it for me. Don’t tell me, Baroness Schraeder turns out to be Hitler in disguise, and they have to take her down with the machine gun that’s actually what Maria’s been carrying in that guitar case all along?”

 

Martin shoved him and laughed.

 

“We could watch the rest of it, though,” Douglas added, facing him now. “I wouldn’t mind. Actually, no, I would mind, that was my way of trying to be veiled and allusive and metaphorical and say I’d like to continue… other things we didn’t finish last night. I think I’m _Sound of Music’_ ed out for the day. Maybe the month. Maybe forever.”

 

Martin stared at him, and swallowed. “And is that statement a metaphor for something, or are we just saying things now?”

 

Douglas stood straight up and held his gaze. It would have been hard for anyone who didn’t know him well, Martin thought, to see how nervous he was. “I want to kiss you. I don’t want to watch Julie Andrews. Is that clear enough?”

 

“Just about,” Martin told him, past the adrenaline that was closing his throat, and brushed the backs of their hands together one more time, not sure which of them he was trying to reassure more. The wind was rustling the willows around them, cold enough to ache, rippling out over the water and out of sight.

 

They were called to retake their seats on the bus. The driver had turned the heating in the vehicle up to full blast and on the journey back Martin fell periodically into a doze, sometimes aware that he’d leant his head against Douglas’ shoulder, sometimes remembering why that was OK, and sometimes remembering why it wasn’t.

 

\- - -

 

Martin opened the door to their room. When they’d both got in, Douglas reached out for him – slowly, nothing like grabbing – and pushed him back against it, back and back, pressing down hard enough to steal his breath, and Martin put his arms out round Douglas’s shoulders and pulled him closer still.

 

“Yes?” Douglas asked, urgent and breathless.

 

Closing his eyes, ignoring the anxious flurry of his pulse, Martin tilted his face up to be kissed.

 

Soon, the world seemed composed of heat and friction. Douglas’ mouth was warm, and tasted slightly sour after a long day without recent refreshment. The gentle, insistent pressure of his tongue was making Martin’s legs tremble, which didn’t matter, so pinioned to the door as he was. Douglas was taller than him, wider than him and stronger than him, and that was dreadful and wonderful in too much mixture to define, stoking up the fire inside him.

 

And then there was the intensity, the eagerness with which Douglas held him; Martin had never felt wanted – needed – like that, like he mattered, like it actually, genuinely mattered to the person embracing him that it was him there and not just any given warm body.

 

Martin dared to run his hands down Douglas’ back and up again, slipping them under his sweater to feel the clammy heat trapped in the t-shirt beneath; intimacy was troublingly composed of fluids, Martin had always felt. The urge for sex had in the past been enough to overcome his distaste; what was alarming now was that he didn’t care, didn’t feel anything but the desire to touch - to touch any or every product or part of Douglas that he could. He wanted the scent of him however he could get it.

 

Douglas had been scared of this, uncertain - alarmed in his own way, and Martin had no more idea now of what was behind that than he’d had the night before. There were so many good reasons not to do this, and they lurked at the edge of Martin’s mind where he didn’t have to examine them as he tightened his hold and gasped again under Douglas’ mouth.

 

“Martin…” Douglas muttered into the air between them. His hands still held Martin’s shoulders, as if to keep him in place. Martin had tried once already to shrug them closer to his neck – he itched for the sensation of those soothing, stroking thumbs.

 

“Martin,” Douglas said again, like he was making a discovery, like something surprised him.

 

Wanting to see his expression, Martin pushed him very slightly back. Douglas looked as serious as Martin had ever seen him, and his eyes were very dark. His mouth looked swollen, reddened with stubble-burn – it made Martin’s gut clench.

 

“Douglas…” Martin spoke over a lump in his throat. He was talking nonsense, he felt, but he didn’t know the script for this, the usual common pleasantries that someone must have worked out, that other people must use. “Douglas. If this is a joke or a set-up or just a way to pass the time, please, tell me now, before… tell me now.”

 

Douglas stared at him, mouth dropping open. He blinked, looked for a moment to be struggling for his own words. “Well the bloody same to you, mate, with knobs on.”

 

“Me? I don’t know what I’m doing – what… what we’re doing - not at all.”

 

“Not at _all_?” Douglas repeated, a slight leer creeping in, the edge of the rakish smile he more usually wore. He pushed a little closer, altering their alignment just a little so that new friction occurred in new places; Douglas was hard too, and Martin couldn’t stop a quick skitter of his own hips forward against him, gulping down a whine at the contact.

 

“I’m not…” Martin sucked in his breath. His body wanted to forget everything but the touch and the pressure. “I’m not a thousand air stewardesses.”

 

Douglas held his gaze. “No. Well, they weren’t either. I mean… God, I’m starting to sound like you.” He softened his words with a quick kiss. “I mean there never were a thousand. Probably twenty, maybe thirty, it wasn’t…”

 

He trailed off. Martin had looked away, unable to compose a response, and he realised now that Douglas was waiting for him to glance up again, tilting his head, ready to coax.

 

Martin raised his eyes.

 

“Some points I can’t be certain on.” Douglas continued, voice low. “There was too much of a lot of things, at one point. And, taken altogether, it left a period of my life in rather a blur. I can’t swear to what happened, exactly, or didn’t. But it was all wrong.  All for the wrong reasons.”

 

They’d drifted apart a little more now. Martin could still lean back against the door, but Douglas was standing alone, unsupported, rubbing one hand into the other as he continued.  

 

“And then - this was in about, oh, 1997, something like that – soon after I turned forty. And then there was Ollie. Oliver. He was a steward with Air England. And… and I didn’t… I didn’t know what to do about how I was feeling, so I decided to stop feeling it, and alcohol was the method I used to achieve that.”

 

Douglas took a deep, shuddering breath, ran a hand back over his hair. “So, that was how I was: in a hell of a mess, for a number of years. I suppose it’s a bit of cliché to explain that I started trying to get dried-out soon after I’d first held my baby daughter, but unfortunately it’s the truth. And, well, I haven’t had a drink this millennium.” He sighed again, shaking his head. “Why am I telling you this? You don’t want to hear it, especially not right now.”

 

“What…” Martin cleared his throat, thought about what a stupid idea it was to ask, and asked anyway. There was a lump of pain in his chest, a strange, sympathetic sorrow and an anger he couldn’t interpret. “What happened to Ollie?”

 

“I have no idea. I hope he’s very happy, I hope he found himself a good man or at least a rich one. For all I know he’s still pushing a trolley through the sky between Dubai and London.”

 

“You never tried to find out? I mean, you… you’ve been single, before, and now.”

 

“Martin, he hated me. I was his overbearing, mocking, superior, rather unkind Captain, and I don’t think we ever exchanged three words outside regulation flight comms.”

 

“But you…”

 

“None of this is about Ollie.” Douglas stepped closer. “I rarely even think of him now, I just… I thought you ought to understand that…” He bit his lip, closed his eyes for a moment. “If you think I’m some sort of suave, experienced… that I’ll know what I’m doing or that I didn’t fight abso-fucking-lutely bloody hard to keep my hands off you…” His voice was raw, breaking at the edges, and Martin didn’t know this Douglas either, except that of course he did, it was all his Douglas, and he was hurting.

 

Martin drew him into a hug, and held on tight, burying his face in Douglas’ neck. This put them both slightly off-balance, and they rocked together, quiet for a while.

 

“Tea,” Martin said, with as much decisiveness as he could muster, still mostly into Douglas’ clothes. “Tea, and showers, and food. And maybe…” He drew back, trying to read Douglas’ response. “And maybe then we’ll figure out what the hell we’re doing.”

 

Douglas’ expression, which had fallen, quirked up again a little. “So we are still… doing? Despite my…”

 

“I tell you this as an absolute fact; I never liked you because I thought you were perfect.” And Martin dropped one more kiss to the warm curve of Douglas’ jaw before going over to boil the kettle.

 

~

 

\- - -

**Six**

\- - -

 

“I’m gay,” Martin said, as on the television the advert break started, and an enthusiastic German woman started talking about muesli bars. They’d been settled in their chairs with the tea a while, watching the BBC re-runs channel and not laughing much. 

 

He looked across at Douglas, who raised an interrogative eyebrow.

 

“Yes, I know, you don’t have to say it: events over the last twenty-four hours had given you an inkling,” Martin rolled his eyes and looked down into his cup. “Isn’t it irritating how hotels, especially in Europe, give you these piddling cups you can barely drown a teabag in, and not proper mugs?”

 

“The crimes of European hotels against tea are too numerous to list,” Douglas agreed. “Were you planning to follow up that statement?”

 

Martin shrugged. “We could start bringing our own mugs?”

 

“No, I mean,” Douglas sighed. “You being gay. You’re just leaving it at that?”

 

“There’s not much more to it. I’m a man. I’m attracted fairly exclusively to men. Ergo, I am gay.”

 

“Just like that? That easily?”

 

“Of course bloody not!” Martin frowned. “But it summarizes my situation. You know about the attic and the van, and Dad, and Simon. And the seven attempts at the pilot’s exam. So, well, that’s everything.”

 

“Yes. Well, I already knew about the gay thing, actually. Or at least that you did date men.”

 

“What? How?”

 

“I saw you once in the café of the Birmingham Debenhams store, lunching with a young male companion.”

 

“What, so two men eating a meal together are automatically gay, are they?”

 

“No, but if you’ve got two men who play footsie throughout their meal, followed by one fondling the other’s bottom rather thoroughly as they gather their bags to leave, it’s a decent outside chance.”

 

Martin felt the heat spreading through his face. It wasn’t nice to hold his cup any more and he set it down on a table. “I kept asking Dave not to be so… so tactile in public,” he said, trying to speak quite calmly. “But he was… and I felt that… well, you know how it is when something’s just starting and you can’t keep your hands off someone?” He looked across, seeking agreement, and then suddenly thought about what he’d said and felt his blush heighten still further; he could barely believe there was blood left for his brain.

 

Douglas coughed. He’d gone a little pink too. “Well, it wasn’t entirely his fault; I had sort of guessed.”

 

“How?”

 

“You play the pronoun game. Far better, it must be said, than you play any other game we’ve ever come up with. Sometimes I thought about challenging you to it – you know, something like ‘Who can go the longest without using a gender-specific word, winner takes that cheese with the gold wrapper’. Thought it might be a low-key sort of way to say I knew.”

 

“You knew,” Martin repeated, trying to let it sink in. He thought back; Dave had been around just after the New Year of 2010 – when he’d reluctantly followed Carolyn and Douglas’ advice to join a dating website – till about three months later. “You knew from not more recently than March of three years ago and you never… You didn’t do anything differently?”

 

“Did you think I would?”

 

“Yes!” Martin checked himself, took a breath, and held his hand out to waylay a response, regretting how quickly he’d snapped the word out. “But then, I suppose there was a lot I didn’t know about you. Or things I thought I knew, that actually I didn’t.”

 

He looked across. Douglas was watching him, face still flushed. “So,” Douglas said after another pause. “Where does that leave us?”

 

Martin gave a short, dry laugh. “Arthur would probably tell you: in Salzburg.”

 

“Oh, Arthur.” Douglas grinned fondly. “I hope his party was everything he dreamed.”

 

“Well…”

 

“Yes, good point, knowing the sort of Magritte-on-acid-meets-CBeebies quality of Arthur’s dreams, perhaps not quite that.”

 

Martin smiled now, a real chuckle rising.

 

Douglas put his tea down carefully, and turned out the cup handle to match the others on the tray. Stretching, he seemed to catch at something in his trouser pocket, and he rifled inside it, pulling out a thick pile of folded paper, which he absently slotted between the sugar bowl and the box of coffee sachets.

 

“We should think about ordering dinner, I suppose,” Douglas said. “Or we could eat in the restaurant. Or, hell, somewhere else in Salzburg, there must be decent places. What do you think?”

 

Martin shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not… I hadn’t really thought about food yet.”

 

“Fair enough.” Douglas stood up and made his way toward the bathroom. “Excuse me a moment.”

 

Martin sat back in silence and temporary solitude and let out a long breath. He picked up his own cup and took it back to the refreshments table. Intrigued by the paper Douglas had put aside, he picked it up and began flicking through the pages, frowning with disbelief and then chuckling again under his breath, jaw dropping with delight.

 

“You kept the quiz!” he called out, as he heard Douglas coming back. “Everyone’s paper is here! What on Earth…?”

 

“Oh, yes. You did win.” Douglas walked back over. “Well, joint first place with one of those American girls. Her friend did almost as well, but whoever marked it had failed to deduct her a point for not knowing that there’s an ‘h’ in ‘schnitzel’. I took the liberty of correcting the score.”

 

‘When did you…?”

 

“While you were sleeping. I had to do something to distract myself.” Douglas’ smile was almost shy.

 

Martin let the quiz papers drop from his hand, twisted round and flung his arms round Douglas’ neck. He kissed his neck, the curve of his jaw where the stubble was, the soft skin by his ear and then his mouth, over and over. Douglas gasped and staggered a little, and eventually kissed back and Martin kept going, suddenly frustrated with how little he could really touch him.

 

“Douglas,” he said, breathless, when he’d had to pull back or suffocate. “No one’s ever… I don’t think anyone else even would have understood how much I… That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

 

Douglas laughed then, but it was bright and pleased and if there was perhaps a little amusement underneath, Martin decided he didn’t have to care. Douglas’ _Martin-is-amusing-me_ grin, whilst irritating, had long been one of his warmest.

 

Martin was not generally one to take the lead in sexual encounters, but he’d never before felt so much like sex was something he wanted to _give_ \- to use as an embrace, an endearment. And now he found himself pushing Douglas back across the room and to the bed – or maybe Douglas was pulling him a little too, certainly there was no opposition. Douglas sat down on the mattress and Martin nudged him down to lie on his back, Martin coming down above to cover him. They kissed like that for a while, until Douglas grunted and rolled them over, effortlessly putting Martin on his back, and for a moment Martin’s eyes seemed to roll back in his head, that had felt so good.

 

“Far too many clothes on,” Douglas complained, tugging at the bottom of Martin’s sweater. Martin moved quickly to get it and his t-shirt off, and saw that Douglas had done the same. For a moment they were still again, taking in the sight of each other, bare above the waist, and then Martin reached out to run his fingers, trembling, through Douglas’ chest hair, and Douglas made another wonderful noise and pressed him down again, bringing them skin to warm skin.

 

They tangled again into touching, stroking and kissing and Martin could feel the heat in his own groin echoed by a maddeningly elusive bulge in Douglas’ trousers. Martin arched his hips up in search of friction, letting out a whining noise that would probably have made him worry about blushing if he hadn’t been sure he was red as a traffic-light already. Douglas seemed to like the sound though, and somehow got a hand between them, cupping his palm against Martin’s fly, pressing down and making Martin moan again.

 

“Remember I’m off my flight-plan here, tell me if I get it wrong,” Douglas muttered, and then he was unzipping Martin’s trousers and reaching in… reaching... taking hold of… Martin gritted his teeth and rocked up uncontrollably and just about managed not to come. He’d dug his fingers into the meat of Douglas’ shoulder, desperate to hang on in every sense, and the tips were going numb.

 

“Martin,” Douglas said, urgently, “Martin, is that… what do you…?”

 

“Yes, that, _that_ , that’s good,” Martin rocked up again, still holding on tight as he fought to ride out the sensations. “It’s… it might be wet if you, if you…” he couldn’t say it, couldn’t make himself be any clearer, but Douglas – wonderful Douglas – apparently figured him out because Martin could feel him running his fingers – his thumb, the smooth, perfect, pad of his thumb – over the tip of Martin’s cock and gathering up the fluid, wiping it carefully back and forth as Martin arched and moaned and kicked his heels and probably printed bruises into Douglas’ back.

 

As Douglas’ thumb moved, the rest of his fingers still held Martin’s erection in their grip and Martin tried to thrust into it, once and then twice, falling back with a cry of frustration at the lack of movement, the angle and friction against him and still just too dry.

 

Douglas was studying him at once, expression alarmed and a little abashed. Martin kissed him quickly, and brought his own hand to gently draw Douglas’ out from between them and up to his mouth. As he started sucking at Douglas’ fingers, Martin felt too self-conscious to meet Douglas’ eye, but when Douglas let out a hungry half-sob in response Martin looked up reflexively, and was fixated in his gaze.

 

“Fuck, Martin…” Douglas whispered, his other hand moving to card through Martin’s hair, and he shuddered and cried out quite beautifully again as Martin slowly sucked in his thumb, licking tenderly over the pad and half-surprised at the taste of himself there.

 

Martin wanted more of that, more of Douglas saying that, looking like that – wanted it more even than he wanted attention back on himself. He edged away from under the lovely press of Douglas’ body and got his feet back on the floor, stopping Douglas’ questions with a quick kiss and a smile.

 

Kneeling by the bed, in front of Douglas’ legs, Martin reached up to get Douglas’ trousers open and off him. Douglas was wearing dark blue boxer shorts with a pattern of little aeroplanes on, and Martin would have smiled for that sight alone, even without the appetizing way they tented at the crotch.

 

“They were the only ones left in the shop,” Douglas said, deadpan.

 

“Ah, you see,” Martin said. “I don’t think that’s the truth, is it?” And he reached out to touch, leaning forward to get a better look as Douglas’ legs spread for him. He stroked the tip of one finger slowly along the curved outline where it strained against the boxers. He went up on his knees and moved his face in closer.

 

“You don’t have to…” Douglas was saying.

 

“No, I don’t,” Martin agreed. He knelt forward and pressed his mouth to the fabric, inhaling the scent of soap and sweat and salt, feeling a twitching pulse against his lips. Pulling back slightly, he carefully edged the elastic of the waistband down, revealing Douglas’ erection to the air, the foreskin nearly all drawn back. Douglas was shorter than he was, here, but had more girth than Martin could recall encountering, and he felt a flame of twitching eagerness between his legs as his body imagined all the places that girth could be put to use.

 

He had to take another deep breath then, rest his head against the mattress, face pressed into Douglas’ inner thigh as he composed himself. This couldn’t be real, wasn’t possible, but then for the past three days Europe had lost the ability to fly and he’d apparently found his way into a world where he thought wistfully of being fucked by Douglas Richardson.

 

Douglas, whose hands were back in Martin’s hair now, stroking so gently, for all the world like his erection wasn’t hard and wanting and mere inches from Martin’s lips.

 

Martin dropped a soft kiss to Douglas’ thigh, and then squared once more to his task. He finished getting Douglas’ boxers off and began to lean in again. He was stopped by a hand at his shoulder, and glanced up, surprised and confused, to find Douglas bending over to kiss him properly and gasp a little into his mouth.

 

He loved Douglas like this, he thought. And waited for the idea to terrify him, but just now it seemed perfectly reasonable, entirely obvious, like gravity and thrust.

 

Thrust… he drew back from the kiss. “Please, Douglas,” he said. “I want to.” And he leant over again.

 

The noise Douglas made, and before he was even touched, went through Martin like lightning. He let his mouth fall open and water, loving the weight and taste of Douglas and feeling arousal curl tighter and tighter in his belly. He had to move one hand to his own groin, giving himself a comforting press. Douglas’ thighs were starting to tremble - little quivers as Martin moved - and Martin felt a burst of smugness and took him deeper.

 

“Martin!” Douglas was touching him again, trying with shaking hands to push him away. “I’m going to… Oh God, oh bloody fucking bloody hell.... I’m….”

 

Martin stayed where he was, twisted his tongue again, and felt Douglas go to pieces beneath him, sharp salt and shuddering.

 

Douglas fell back against the bed. “Come here, you,” he gasped, panting and reaching out.

 

Martin, uncertain, knelt up again, Douglas urging him right up and onto the mattress until he was kneeling astride Douglas’ crotch, all wet and flushed as it was, and the sight made something burn, deep and satisfied, in Martin’s chest. When Douglas moved to try and kiss him, Martin hesitated, but Douglas guided his head in without missing a beat, and groaned in apparent delight when he found his own taste on Martin’s tongue.

 

Martin had been so hard so long that he ached, and he couldn’t help but rut his hips a little as they lay against each other, sweat and pre-come giving him a lovely slide through the hair at Douglas’ navel.

 

Douglas smiled – Martin could feel it through the kiss – and tentatively moved his hands to Martin’s lower back, helping him to keep his rhythm. Heady with breathlessness, Martin reached behind himself and pushed those hands more fully down onto the swell of his buttocks, rocking harder, letting himself press back into Douglas’ hold on every counter-thrust and making it clear how much it pleased him. At first Douglas’ touch was only that, but slowly his grip tightened, digging in, and he began to use his strength to move Martin to and fro, till Martin only had to relax and let Douglas make him frot into the softer skin and slick hair of Douglas’ belly.

 

Burying his face in Douglas’ neck, Martin gave up and let himself whine, in and out with his speeding breath, and held on, tighter and tighter until everything slipped free and he was flying and blinded as he came.

 

Douglas’ hands moved up around him, hugging him close, stroking gently, so gently, as Martin breathed and quivered and sank back into himself, and became aware that he was collapsed astride Douglas like a beached fish, sticky and sweaty and still with his socks on.

 

He would move in a moment. In just a moment. When the world stopped spinning.

 

Perhaps having finally regained some blood-flow, Martin’s stomach gave an almighty rumble. He winced.

 

Douglas chuckled. He carefully pushed Martin off him and onto his back to lie next to him, coming up himself on one hand to look down. He was smiling softly. “Right. Food next, then,” he said.

 

“Washing, then dressing, then food?” Martin offered.

 

“You have the very best ideas,” Douglas told him, and kissed him once more, one hand creeping down to curve again over his behind, kneading lightly. Martin whimpered and nearly bit his own tongue, and Douglas held him tighter for moment, until Martin’s stomach decided to complain again.

 

\- - -

 

“Well, I never would have predicted this,” Douglas remarked, after they’d been eating quietly for a while.

 

Martin stared at him across the table.

 

“Siting here in central Salzburg and eating from a Thai buffet. I mean,” Douglas shrugged, “it’s just not what one expects, is it?”

 

Martin threw a pepper sachet at him, and rolled his eyes at Douglas’ chuckle. Turning back to his own meal, he violently speared his next piece of green curried chicken, catching some beans and rice on his forkful and conveying it to his mouth. As this was part of an attempt to regain some dignity, he was frustrated when the curry sauce started dripping from the food, forcing him to move his tongue quickly to save his shirtfront. He glanced across at Douglas, expecting further mockery, and caught him in a rather fixed stare, his lips slightly open and his breathing shallow.

 

Douglas was looking at his _mouth_ , Martin realised, and a sort of heady glaze seemed to slip through the air, leaving him glowing and scarcely able to remember his appetite.

 

They’d come across the small Thai restaurant soon after setting out from their hotel, having agreed in the end to go out for their evening meal. Martin had championed the suggestion, and with a mixture of motives; now that they had done… things, in the bedroom, he felt strangely protective of it, and didn’t want another waiter to come and look at them and draw conclusions. And if they’d stayed in the room he wasn’t even sure they’d have managed to get round to eating, and that was unsettling enough to want to avoid before he had to think any more about it. That took them out of their room, and since Douglas still had strong feelings regarding _Sound of Music_ murals, and Martin hadn’t liked the hotel restaurant enough to make any defence of it, out to the streets they’d gone

 

This was what people did, Martin thought, in holiday brochures and TV adverts and so on – what couples did – wander around charming foreign cities in the evening, walking slowly over cobbles, arm in arm, or swing past wrought iron lampposts or smile and point at lights on a river. It had made Martin feel self-conscious - somehow out of his own skin - to be walking in such a way with Douglas.

 

Then, on the other hand, there had been the normality of it – of the two of them just strolling along in a foreign city of an evening, looking for a cheap meal, as they might have done on any scheduled lay-over. Martin had kept feeling they ought to be waiting for Arthur and Carolyn to catch up behind them. And that hadn’t been the easiest feeling either; how in some ways nothing had really changed at all.

 

What he and Douglas had done would make things different now, or at least he thought it would. If they were like holiday brochure people, then Douglas might offer to pay for the meal or something ghastly and embarrassing like that. But then, if Douglas didn’t offer to pay, would that mean he didn’t think they were holiday brochure people after all?

 

Back in their hotel room, it had all seemed so clear and easy – effortless, in some ways. But that was the illusion, and out here was the real world, a world they had to go out and be in, and Martin couldn’t know how to be if he didn’t know what they were, or weren’t, now. And it was bad enough here, in the suspended animation of a trip abroad, let alone back in the damp, beige reality of Fitton, with all the rusty vans and broken boilers and special shower grot and engineers telling poofter jokes.

 

Holiday brochure people, if they weren’t already sharing an idyllic detached mansion in the Cotswolds with their two-point-four kids, one generally imagined to be visiting each other at ultra-chic penthouse apartments with glass balconies and silk sheets. Martin had a single bed and a packing case for a table and a third-hand television set that wouldn’t receive ITV. Douglas might know about that, but there’d never been a risk of him actually seeing it, before.

 

“I think it’s dead now, Martin,” Douglas said.

 

Martin blinked and realised he’d been viciously slicing his chicken into smaller and smaller pieces whilst he stared interrogatively at nothing. He dropped his cutlery with a clatter and bit his lip, and blushed, then sipped his water again.

 

Douglas downed another spoonful of pork noodle soup, and studied him. “You alright? Food OK?”

 

“Yes, yes, the food’s fine.”

 

“You’re worrying about something.” Douglas looked so earnest, and Martin didn’t want to break the spell, didn’t want to remind Douglas about the real world if Douglas himself hadn’t thought of it yet.

 

“I’m fine,” Martin told him, trying to smile. “I’m just…” he rubbed his stomach. “That cream cake at the café after lunch and now this – I’m not really used to so much rich food. It’s delicious, but it doesn’t sit very well.”

 

Douglas gave a sympathetic frown. “Well don’t finish that unless you want to. I’m sure we can find somewhere open to sell us some bread and sandwich things. Or there’s always room-service, after all.”

 

Martin gave a pained laugh. He’d be paying for the meal in front of him, eaten or uneaten, and he definitely wasn’t going to leave one piece of it.

 

“Martin,” Douglas said, softly, and reached across the table to take his hand, stroking his thumb over Martin’s knuckles. Martin wondered if Douglas knew just how addictively lovely that was, whether he did it on purpose, one of the skills learnt over decades of flirtation with the entire world, or whether it was just him, just his natural tenderness coming through. He wasn’t sure which would be worse, somehow.

 

“Martin,” Douglas said again. “What’s wrong?”

 

“Let’s go back,” Martin said, quickly, looking up at him. Forget the damned meal, forget the price, forget all the sensible things for once. There could only be so much of this left, and he wanted all he could have, wanted to store up everything he could for when the lonely cold came back. “Let’s go back to the hotel, now, please? I’m… You look so…” and he let his tongue slip out of his mouth, slowly moistening his lips, and watched Douglas watch it.

 

Douglas did look pretty good, in his new suit jacket and corduroys, and the gaze he gave Martin made Martin’s wish to drag him back into bed completely sincere. He could have gone a long time, he thought, not letting himself know how attractive he found Douglas, but once he’d started to see it, it was probably going to be impossible to forget.

 

“You’re sure?” Douglas asked him. He was frowning a little again.

 

Martin leant over the table, blushing, self-conscious and deciding not to care. What did it matter what a few other diners in the restaurant thought? They didn’t know him or who he was or why this was important, or how important this was.

 

“I want you,” he murmured, and dropped his eyes to Douglas’ crotch. “I want you to…”

 

A waiter was wending his way back to their table, and this might have helped determine Douglas’ decision to question no further. “Right, yes, OK, we’re just leaving, actually,” he said in a rapid jumble, standing up and wrestling his coat off the back of his chair, moving to hold it in front of himself. “Here you go,” he said to the waiter, and chucked some Euro notes to the table. “Cheers awfully, fabulous dinner, see you soon.”

 

He held out his arm, gesturing Martin ahead of him, guiding him with a hand to the small of his back, and Martin strode on and out into the street and the darkness, letting the excitement coil up inside him until it could almost push the wistfulness away.  

 

~

 

\- - -

**Seven**

\- - -

 

This time it was Martin pressing them both back against the hotel room door, Martin working his fingers into their clothes, struggling to move them along. Douglas briefly tried to hold him still and seemed to be wanting to slow things down, but Martin pushed his hands away, scrabbling too eagerly at their shirts to allow delay.

 

“Martin,” Douglas said, softly. “You are sure? This is what you want to do right now?”

 

“Yes!” Martin kissed him, quick but deep, continuing to work at his buttons. “Yes, I do want this, I do, I want it.” Not dignified, but there seemed to be a risk that Douglas would stop here and try and talk, not letting them even have this, and Martin couldn’t bear that.

 

“OK, OK, it’s alright.” Douglas raised both his hands in acquiescence, then put one to grip the back of Martin’s neck, tilting his head up, gazing at him, still looking perplexed. “But you do remember that I’ve never… that I might not be quite, well, quite – listen to this, now, because I doubt I’ll have cause to say it again this decade – but I might not get this exactly right.”

 

“Oh, I’ll show you,” Martin reassured him, and moved Douglas’ hands to his arse, pressing them down with his own and causing Douglas to close his eyes and let out a short, pained grunt and a gasp. Martin kissed him for that, too fast and too distracted to stop it being clumsy and with too much tooth. Douglas gripped tighter in response, though.

 

When they were both stripped down to their underwear, Martin allowed some space to come between them, and drew Douglas back towards the bed.

 

Douglas came rather slowly. “Don’t we need…? I don’t want to hurt you,” Douglas said, glancing around the room as if hoping appropriate supplies might have been provided alongside the little pots of UHT milk. The room was dim – neither of them had turned on the main overhead lights, and the illumination came from the orange glow of the nearest lamppost, filtered through the gauzy white privacy curtains that they’d never pulled back earlier that day. Martin squeezed his eyes closed and wondered why one couldn’t just stay in the good moments, the easy ones, why time had to press on and end things.

 

“Because we don’t have to do that,” Douglas continued. “I could try with my mouth, for now, maybe?” He sounded less than self-assured, but quietly eager.

Martin hadn’t thought to want that. And now he knew he did, and would regret never having tried it, but his original plan was still what he wanted most, what he needed most to have had, while he had the chance.

 

“There’s moisturizer in the bathroom,” Martin pointed out. “And I’ve got two condoms in my overnight kit, with my First Aid stuff, that I don’t think can be quite out of date.”

 

Douglas shrugged slightly, his smile small, nervous. “Well, if you really want to.”

 

“Don’t you?” Martin felt a sudden rush of fear, a terrible suspicion he might have got this wrong. He’d been so smug with himself, what he’d thought to be his power, as if he’d ever be remotely convincing as an object of lust.

 

Douglas gave a short, dark laugh. “Of course I do. I’ve wanted to for a bloody long time, remember?”

 

Well perhaps he had, Martin thought - all those years in the closet, staring at the Ollies of the world and wanting and not having. And now he had Martin, offering him the chance he’d never had before.

 

Of course, if Douglas had worked out that Martin was gay years ago, then perhaps he’d long realised that he had access to someone with whom he could finally do this, try this out. Someone who wouldn’t be all that hard to get, someone who wouldn’t make a fuss or demand too much afterwards. Someone who’d be, in the words of the engineers, grateful for it.

 

Well, Martin would show him. Martin would show him just what this could be, what he could be. His sexual experience wasn’t exactly encyclopaedic, but he knew well enough how to make it good for the bloke on top. Douglas had never done this before, well, Martin would blow his mind. Leave him plenty to think about when they were back in Fitton and Douglas trying to laugh this off, or sweep it away, or point at Martin’s lack of social graces and ask him how he’d ever thought this was anything other than a bit of fun, what airline staff did all the time, goodness, how naïve could Martin be?

 

Martin became aware of a nagging pain, and realised he’d been clenching his fists, digging his nails into the palms of his hands.

 

Douglas was waiting quietly, watching him.

 

“I’ll just get the stuff, then,” Martin said.

 

He went to rifle through his bag, and to retrieve the lotion from the bathroom, and found that Douglas had pulled back the covers to leave the mattress bare, and put down a couple of towels. Yes, because they were going to mess up the bed again, Martin thought, for real this time. Not just him spilling cocoa and Douglas gently cleaning him up, and why had they moved beyond that? That had been warm, that had been nice, small enough that they could have worked it into their reality and kept tender with each other, brushes and touches and half-hugs, enough to live on.

 

Martin, aware of Douglas still watching him, climbed onto the mattress and moved back to lean against the headboard, depositing the supplies beside him. He was wondering now if he should also have actually prepared himself in the bathroom – Douglas might not want to see the process in detail, or even to consider it. Martin had been seeing a chap for a while – someone who’d introduced himself as ‘formerly straight’ – who liked Martin to be slick and ready under covers in the dark, so that he could spread his legs and get in without, perhaps, even quite acknowledging what he was doing or to whom. After Dave, that had been the second-longest relationship of his life. 

 

Martin paused, little lotion bottle in his hands, uncertain how to phrase the question. Then the mattress dipped and Douglas came closer, sitting sideways and turning to face him. “Hey, it’s OK,” Douglas was saying. “God knows I’m nervous too. I do know roughly what’s supposed to happen, though, and if you want me to, well, step in and initiate manoeuvres, I’m prepared to give it the good old college try.”

 

Martin blinked at him. “But I thought… So you have been with men before?”

 

“Not at all. I admit my knowledge is indirect, and gained mostly from, well, there’s this wonderful thing they have now called the Internet, perhaps you’ve heard of it? But as you know, at some point one has to move from sound theoretical basis to practical experience. I might not be as good at it as… well, you might have to give me some constructive criticism, which heaven knows should be an inducement for you in itself, but I believe I can promise not to hurt you. My hands are clean and my nails freshly manicured, see?”

 

Douglas held out his hand for inspection and Martin took it unthinkingly into his own, cradling it, turning it over, looking at the bumps and creases, the scar across the thumb he kept meaning to ask about, the writer’s callus, the neat-trimmed nails. He tried to take in the fact that Douglas had been thinking about this and in that thought, of all things, he had considered his hands, and whether his hands could hurt Martin.

 

Now Douglas drew his hand away, but before Martin could even raise his heartbeat in alarm, he was cupping Martin’s face, drawing him close and kissing him. Douglas’ lips were still cold from the night air, and he tasted of pork noodle soup. Douglas, Martin recalled, hadn’t finished his meal either, had caught the urgency from Martin and not even tried to fight it.

 

Martin sighed and let himself melt into it, into being kissed, hands falling to his sides as Douglas moved to kneel over him. There was the sound of a cap clicking, and Martin glanced down and saw that Douglas had opened the moisturising lotion and had squeezed a little onto his palm. Martin tensed instinctively, but Douglas was either aware of his nerves or nervous himself, because when he reached out it was for Martin’s cock, only as yet half-hard with the stress of the last few minutes. Douglas started up a slow rhythm of strokes, letting his thumb rub that particular spot under the head, and soon drawing Martin up into a pounding erection, keeping at him until Martin was murmuring in time with the touch, when he could through being kissed.

 

Martin had wanted this to be a show of his own experience, not Douglas taking him apart. But then he’d wanted this too, this sheer helplessness Douglas seemed able to bring him to, where all the worry and the self-awareness and the overthinking went away, and he just needed, and seemed always to be given.

 

He became aware of Douglas finally moving his fingers slowly downwards, tentatively cupping Martin’s balls, lifting the weight of one and then the other, undulating his fingers like a flute player, just enough to make Martin whine.

 

“That’s it,” Douglas muttered – he’d drawn back, apparently intent on watching what he was doing. “You do want to. You really do, don’t you? Oh Martin…”

 

“Please,” Martin gasped, ready to affirm anything, and spread his legs a little wider.

 

Douglas seemed hesitant, though, frowning and biting his lip, until finally Martin grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand down, sliding Douglas’ slick fingers down between his legs like some sort of sex toy until, finally…

 

“There,” Martin instructed. “Rub and… and, oh, oh… go slowly, but…”

 

“Fuck!” Douglas exclaimed, with some heat. His fingers kept their gentle rhythm against him and Martin had to bite off his cry and fight to breathe. He knew Douglas had barely two fingertips against him, but either Douglas’ fingers were broader and blunter than any Martin had been used to, or else Martin had never in the past been worked up into such sensitivity before being fingered, because it felt almost overwhelmingly intimate.

 

Douglas was muttering something, maybe swearing, maybe a question, maybe nonsense; Martin could scarcely spare the attention any more, only rock himself against Douglas’ hand, demanding more.

 

“…you are, you are, absolutely, you really are…” Douglas was saying against his ear, breath hot, and Martin tried to focus on him and caught a glimpse of his reddened face, twisted in a frown of deep concentration, his dark eyes fixed at the sight between Martin’s legs.

 

“In! Push in!” Martin told him, barely coherent. “You can now, please, you can, in now…”

 

Douglas obeyed, one thick fingertip forcing through the muscle, and Martin bit his lip and tried to stop making such stupid noises, leant his head back against the wall and squeezed his eyes shut and fought for control of himself.

 

“How does one locate…?” he heard Douglas begin to ask after an indeterminate time, having slowly, achingly slowly, pushed his one finger in further as Martin sweated and swore and kept having to put his hands back on the bed when they rose instinctively, wanting to curl him in and hang round Douglas’ neck and broad shoulders.

 

“At the front, my front, not that high up. Try… try bending… you’ll know when you… Yes! Fuck! There!” Martin grabbed Douglas’ upper arm and felt his whole body shake, the aching-perfect-needing wave of it radiating out from where Douglas’ fingers had found him. His cock was twitching and he could feel fluid dripping onto his stomach, but he did nothing about it, put his other hand to Douglas’ other shoulder instead; he didn’t want this to end.

 

Getting his eyes open, blinking at the burn of the sweat running into them, he saw Douglas watching him, gaze flicking between Martin’s face and down to where they joined.

 

“If you could only see yourself right now,” Douglas muttered. “Oh God, Martin.”

 

And this, this was what Martin had wanted, what he’d aimed for; Douglas, in awe, pinioned. But he could see now that like all his ideas this was a foolish, under-worked-out recipe for disaster, with so many factors he’d totally forgotten to consider. Like how getting Douglas here, raw, would split him open too, how taking one shot at everything would leave him with nothing; nothing to hide, nothing to hide behind afterwards.

 

That in knowing how good it could be, he’d always know what he’d lost.

 

“Can I?” Douglas asked. He sounded breathless, throat dry and clicking.

 

Martin nodded, taking the chance to wipe the back of his hand over the sweat on his forehead whilst Douglas pulled away – carefully – and started sorting out the condom. Martin considered his options for a moment, and scooted down the bed to lie flat on his back, reaching above his head to grab a pillow and trying to wedge it under his hips.

 

Douglas knelt back up and took hold of it. “Here,” he said, and when Martin arched up his body clear of the bed, Douglas pushed the pillow neatly into place. He trailed his hand along Martin’s thigh, moving to cup his knee, and pressed very slightly to urge Martin’s legs open.

 

Martin had never entirely liked this position – the sense of utter submission, of being on display and vulnerable whilst the other person remained contained and with every ability to escape. He’d picked it partly for that reason, to try and keep himself from getting lost in it all again, partly because he thought it might be easiest for Douglas.

 

He’d not expected Douglas to keep one hand on his knee, thumb stroking soothingly again, all through getting them interlocked and aligned. He’d not expected the look on Douglas’ face as he studied what had to be a sticky mess all round Martin’s cock and cleft, and he’d not expected Douglas to curl in and try to kiss him, even as he pushed in and thrust home.

 

The kiss broke, having never quite started; they were both gasping, fighting their own reactions as Douglas got inside, slowly, so slowly that Martin raised his legs to hang on round his torso and try and urge him down faster. Douglas felt huge inside him, but the burn and stretch of it teetered perfectly on the edge of too much, or just enough.

 

Douglas groaned like it really did hurt him, and Martin opened his eyes, blinking, anxious, and caught his gaze, shocked by how overwhelmed he looked, how close his expression was to fear.

 

“It’s alright,” Martin heard himself saying. He reached out his hand, cradled Douglas’ face, still holding him in tight with his legs, resisting the urge to make him move again. “It’s alright, this is… this is so good, Douglas, it’s… God, it’s… it’s never been like this, I don’t… So good, so very, very good…”

 

Douglas coughed. When he looked up, he was smiling a little. “Careful, you’re likely to confirm my own opinion of myself.”

 

“Like anything could shake that particular article of faith,” Martin teased, his voice wobbling a little. But Douglas’ smile was infectious, and when Douglas leaned in and rubbed their noses together Martin was tickled into giggling and grinning as he pushed him away.

 

“Is it alright?” Douglas asked, earnestly.

 

Martin sighed, and kissed him, and moved his hips, letting out the gasps and the whines and the needing noises that would tell Douglas everything, all of it, far too much. And Douglas thrust and kissed him and gasped right back, bare and vulnerable in Martin’s arms, held by Martin’s limbs, held inside Martin’s body.

 

Perhaps, Martin thought, the idea half-catching as most of his mind melted into need, perhaps he’d got some of this all backwards all along.

 

“I can’t, I can’t…” Douglas was protesting now, “I’m sorry,” and he was putting a hand to Martin’s cock, stroking, racing him up and up and towards the end, and Martin came so hard his vision blurred, and felt an incredible sense of loss as Douglas swore loudly and came too, collapsing onto him, strings cut.

 

For some time they sprawled together in the mess of themselves, breathing hard. Martin was sore between his legs – he’d not prompted Douglas to reapply the lotion lubricant – but it was a pain that didn’t hurt… or something, he struggled to compose a thought in his head at that moment.

 

Douglas was lying mostly on him, head resting on Martin’s chest, and Martin couldn’t resist combing his fingers through Douglas’ hair, the too-long silky strands of it now standing up all any which way, dark with sweat. Martin let his fingers rest still, buried beyond the hairline, and, smiling a little to himself, stroked his thumbs at Douglas’ temples.

 

This brought out an encouraging murmur, and then Douglas was lifting his head up, pulling away, and Martin missed it already, the closeness.

 

“Reasonable, then?” Douglas asked.

 

“The judges are all holding up tens,” Martin assured him, almost covering the hoarseness of his voice. “Except a two from East Germany, and that’s just spite and jealousy.”

 

“I was worried that was going to turn into a _Strictly Come Dancing_ reference for a moment there,” Douglas said, teasing tone belying a pleased flush rising in his cheeks.

 

“And if it was? Some of us happen to spend a lot of Saturday nights inside, you know.” Martin heard his own voice catch even as he casually spoke the words. Because this was the nub, the crux of it all, of whether things were as hopeless as he’d started to fear or whether… well, whether it was a mountain they could climb.

 

“What are you laughing at now? Because I know it’s not my very manly bearing as I struggle like a beached whale to sit up properly, you having shagged the life out of me.”

 

“Oh, did I shag you? I really wasn’t paying enough attention - I could have sworn it was the other way round.”

 

“Don’t think you didn’t,” Douglas told him, and with intensity. He kissed Martin quickly, and Martin didn’t let it stop for a while.

 

“If you must know, I was making _Sound of Music_ references in the privacy of my own head between consenting neurons.”

 

“Oh, is that what’s going on up there? Only,” Douglas took a deep breath and frowned a little. “It seemed like maybe the neurons weren’t having such fun, a little earlier. Or am I wrong?”

 

Martin raised an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you were willing to ask that, even rhetorically.”

 

“Well, suppose you were to generously answer my rhetorical question?”

 

“That rhetorical question? Or the one before?”

 

“Martin,” Douglas sighed.

 

Rather than answer, Martin got out of the bed and padded over the floor towards his abandoned trousers. He’d meant to go straight there, but moving brought to his attention the state of his torso and thighs, and he diverted to the bathroom to have a quick wipe-down, bringing Douglas back a wet towel. Then he got to his clothes, and fished out his phone. It was a very not-smart phone, a good eight years old, but whilst it didn’t track your exercise regime or get email or allow you to manage a small national space agency, it could take pictures. Which had been useful six months ago when he’d had to threaten his landlord with images of the rising damp (which, if it had risen to the attic, was fairly serious in its quest).

 

“There,” he said, bringing up the main image and walking back to the bed. “That’s my flat. Well, scarcely more than a bedsit and basin, as you can see.”

 

Douglas looked at the picture, then up at him. “You’ll pardon me not understanding the relevance of this?”

 

Martin huffed with frustration, and the oncoming prickle of the map of Indonesia. “That’s my life, Douglas, the rest of my life, it’s dingy and a bit damp and really somewhat depressing. That’s what… well, if this isn’t just now, if this… That’s me, that’s me, underneath.”

 

“And that was what you were worried about? That was what…” Douglas looked up at him – for a moment he looked so angry that Martin was sure he was every bit as disgusted by the picture as Martin had feared. But Douglas’ words tailed off and he closed his eyes for a moment.

 

“Here,” Douglas said, and sprang off the bed himself, making his own journey to the clothes pile and fishing out a sleek rectangle of metal. He prodded at it – his phone, the smartest one could imagine, of course – and handed it to Martin, an image of a cosy-looking sitting room, three piece suite upholstered in leather and adorned with scatter cushions front and centre. “Here, that’s my house. And before you make that face,” he added, halting Martin’s question, “look again, really look. Look at the way I’ve taken a picture of the bloody furniture like some sort of pillock. That’s so the lawyers have a reference as they continue awarding half the estate to my ex-wife, who is shacked up in a Dockside conversion with the most limber man in Great Britain. Look at the hooks on the wall with nothing on them, because the pictures from my marriage had to go. Look at how unnaturally tidy it is – that’s because I’ve swept the pizza boxes away, and the empty cans and all the other detritus of a man who has no one to talk to in the evening, and not even a drinks cupboard to keep him company.”

 

He was pale when he’d finished speaking, his hands trembling a little on Martin’s shoulder as he leant over him. This was Douglas’ protective skin being pushed aside, and it was easy to see how hard he found it.

 

For a moment, Martin couldn’t think what to do or say. But then, that was a reasonably familiar state of being for him.

 

“When you invited me round for a drink, last month,” he said, slowly. “You actually wanted to see me.”

 

Douglas sighed, and dropped to sit down beside him on the mattress edge. “Was that so very hard to decode?”

 

Martin shrugged, and Douglas gave a short laugh and pecked him on the cheek. “Listen, Martin. Whilst I will admit that I am a startlingly talented individual, and far from lacking in any personal quality…”

 

“Especially modesty?”

 

“Especially modesty, exactly. Whilst all that is true, my life is not currently what I would describe as a stunning success. Well, except for you, except for this, now.” He took Martin’s hand. “You and MJN, that’s what keeps me getting out of bed in the morning. And, well, if I can bring to your life what you bring to mine, I can confidently say I’ll be one of the best lovers alive.”

 

“Especially modesty,” Martin repeated dryly, fighting a sudden burning in his eyes, and kissed Douglas hard, hard and long and deep, holding him close, the body heat sweet in the cooling air.

 

“I don’t know about you,” Douglas murmured, after a while. “But I feel this calls for cheese on toast.”

 

Martin grinned. “At the very least,” he agreed.

 

~

 

\- - -

**Epilogue**

\- - -

 

Into Martin’s dreams there came the sound of Douglas singing.

 

“Come fly with me, the ash has gone away! If you could use, some exotic juice, there’s Arthur’s pineapple by the cheese tray…”

 

Martin blinked, slowly sitting up in the bed. There was Douglas, still humming, wandering round the room picking their clothes up from where yesterday they’d let them lie. They’d had their toasted cheese, courtesy of a rather confused but obliging room service, and two cups of tea each, since the cups were so small, and just about stayed awake long enough not to repeat any beverage accidents before getting the covers up over them.

 

Martin had slept deeply, barely even aware of whether they’d been touching, but it was reassuring now to see Douglas right there before him, steaming cup of coffee at the ready. He brought it over to Martin, and kissed him smartly.

 

“Really?” Martin asked groggily, through a contented grin. “We can fly again?”

 

“Well, technically.” Douglas smiled. “The ash has diminished and flights over Europe have started up again, according to the BBC. But according to Carolyn, as the various aviation authorities struggle to plan and plot everyone back to where they should be, or want to be, poor old G-ERTI and ourselves rate rather low on the priority list. And no one’s rushing to book a charter plane in the wake of the entire air travel system breaking down. So, in Carolyn’s words, we might as well squeeze ourselves another night here. She’ll keep us updated.”

 

Martin smiled. “Perfect. And I know just what we can do.”

 

Douglas raised his eyebrow and came rather closer.

 

“Yes,” Martin continued. “Because it would criminal to leave this illustrious city without having seen Mozart’s birthplace.”

 

As he’d hoped, despite the great resources of wit and subtle riposte at his disposal, Douglas chose to illustrate his counter-argument in a rather physical fashion.

 

~ ~ ~

 


End file.
